Before the recession, many meeting planners pretended that strategic meetings management was a passing fancy that would never become a widespread reality. Today, however, they are learning that SMM is not only here to stay, but that it is quickly transforming their roles from tacticians to strategic thinkers — and that in order to survive and prosper in a new, more accountable environment, they must adapt.

Put simply, says Deborah Sexton, president and CEO of the Professional Convention Management Association (PCMA) in Chicago, a meeting planner who aspires to a long career must now be perceived as someone whose skills and capabilities reach far beyond traditional logistics.

“Logistics are a given now,” says Sexton, who has been a leader of the industry’s SMM-related educational initiatives over the last few years. “So, in order for a meeting professional to truly play a strategic role within their organizations, they need to be sitting at the table with meeting owners and management. That means they need to understand the underlying business objectives of each and every meeting they do. And that means they have to be involved from the beginning in the discussions about how those objectives can be met and the bottom-line value of the meeting delivered.”

One of Puerto Rico’s most recognizable landmarks, El Morro is a historic fortress located on the northwestern-most point of Old San Juan. Credit: ©www.THOMASHARTSHELBY.com

“Smooth.” That’s the new tag line for the Puerto Rico Convention Bureau (PRCB) because they say meeting on the island is a smooth experience from start to finish.

Earlier this year, the bureau launched Puerto Rico Smooth Meeting University (PRSMU), an online education portal for planners that offers a series of online courses on planning meetings in Puerto Rico. Topics include meeting hotels, the PRCC, the island’s rich culture and history, golf, dining and nightlife.

Upon completion, planners earn a “Puerto Rico Smooth Meeting Specialist” designation, explains Neil Mullanaphy, senior vice president, sales for the bureau. “Puerto Rico University offers busy planners a thorough understanding of Puerto Rico as a meetings destination and a centralized location for planning and booking tools,” he says.

Great Golf Events put together the 14th annual CenterLight Health System Golf Classic held in July at Century Country Club in Purchase, NY. Credit: Kate Drew Miller Photography

Make no mistake about it. There’s a lot that can be accomplished on a golf course that has nothing to do with hitting a spectacular drive straight down the fairway or making a difficult putt. There’s just no telling how many business deals have been brokered or cemented while the participants were hitting the greens.

Roger Caldwell, owner and founder of Great Golf Events, headquartered in Prairie Village, KS, has been planning corporate golf tournaments for 15 years. He says that after nailing down the date of the tournament, the most important question to ask is “What is the business purpose?”

He shared an example of how one of his clients uses golf events to achieve stellar business results. “A corporate client of mine (a software company) created an event called ‘Revenue Accelerators.’ They brought in their top 10 clients that they were anticipating on closing by a certain date along with 10 existing clients that were running similar applications. Then they paired their customers with the potential clients along with the sales rep and somebody else. For all intents and purposes, we had 10 to 15 groups, and they were all foursomes.”

Melissa Van Dyke is president of the Incentive Research Foundation. She previously was the managing consultant of the Employee Engagement Practice and held leadership positions in Solution Management, Product Development and Business Technology Solution Management at Maritz. m.vandyke@theirf.org, www.theirf.org

Over the last 20 years, the Incentive Research Foundation (IRF) has released more than 50 studies on incentives, recognition and motivational meetings. During that time, we have learned an enormous amount about the elements necessary to execute a successful incentive travel program. Many of these elements were initially discussed in our 2002 milestone study “Incentives, Motivation, and Workplace Performance.” They were confirmed again last fall when our Incentives Insights (http://insights.theIRF.org) effort reached out to more than 40 industry executives in order to better understand what makes or breaks a successful program.

Five Keys to Success

Following are five keys to unlocking the most successful incentive travel program possible.

1. Culture is crucial.  Above all else, recent efforts show that incentive travel events are most effective when they are the synthesized reflection of both the organization and the potential earners’ cultures. The amount of time spent in meetings, the level of interaction among key players, the inclusion of spouses and even the types of activities, communication and recognition that occur during the event must all be a distilled reflection of the desired organizational culture and the earners themselves. The program for a large family-oriented company with many earners who are nearing retirement should (and must) look very different from that of a small tech-centered start-up whose potential earners are on their first post-college career.
2. Visible management is a must.  Top performers need to believe that their efforts are being seen and recognized by the management representatives who influence their careers most. However, this does not mean that all top performers want this recognition to culminate in a walk across a stage and a handshake with their president or CEO. In fact, IRF research found there are some cultures for which this type of recognition is the least important part of the program. It is most important to design visible executive and senior manager support at key points including when the organization announces the program, releases interim results and reveals the final winners. Senior management inclusion in an onsite event also should mean more than simply showing up. They should engage with each performer and reinforce how their individual and group accomplishments made a difference to the organization as a whole.

“The desirability of the incentive trip
location and experience either sparks
or repels the desire to achieve it.”

3. Communication is key.  The primary feedback we received when we asked incentive travel executives what could break a program, was that the communications efforts for most group incentive travel programs are underfunded, untimely and often uninspiring. A few text-laden emails will not suffice to rally any type of emotion in potential earners. Communications must help participants know exactly what is required to earn the trip, how well they’re meeting the performance expectations, and how close they are to achieving their goal. But the communication  also must be inspiring. In an attention-deficit world, even the most expertly crafted onsite experience will be for naught if its potential is buried in unending black and white text. Finally, communications should remind attendees of the efforts that lead to the award. Attendees who cannot readily articulate what exact performance led to their earning the experience is a major red flag of poor communication design.
4. Fairness is fundamental. Although not the flashiest part of the program, the importance of a well-designed and communicated rule structure cannot be stressed enough. It is crucial not only to the program’s metric success, but also to its motivational impact. Rules structures that are overly complicated or perceived as even minutely unfair will quickly derail even the best efforts. In fact, the perception of unfairness or loss of status registers in the same brain centers as a threat to one’s life. Likewise, feelings of fairness ignite the same brain areas as financial rewards. Program designers must craft rules structures that are challenging but fair, and communicate these rules effectively to eligible participants to gain ongoing buy-in.
5. Lead with location.  As all skilled planners know, destination is key. The desirability of the incentive trip location and experience either sparks or repels the desire to achieve it. The destination and overall trip design must capture the hearts and minds of potential earners. Advances in technology and infrastructure mean that the world is collapsing and becoming more accessible to planners, but also to earners themselves. Planning the trip of a lifetime can therefore be difficult. However, all trends data seems to accentuate that authentic, culturally relevant experiences still resonate with almost all earners. When these experiences are coupled with trends in wellness, social media and social responsibility, the possibilities for a motivational event are endless.

No Single Answer

Years of experience and research have shown that there is no single right way to craft or run a group incentive travel program for all people, across all channels, in all situations. But research seems to show that planners who design programs that are culturally relevant, visibly supported, well-communicated and perceived as fair and execute these programs in authentic, inspiring destinations, will have greater success in creating a win for both their attendees and their organizations. C&IT

The Steel Pier amusement pier on The Boardwalk in Atlantic City (left) is dwarfed by The Empire State Building in New York City. Credits: Atlantic City CVB; Empire State Building Company

Tourism is thriving in New York City. A record 52 million visitors and an all-time high of $55.3 billion in economic impact are two of the incredible firsts being touted in the first-ever NYC & Company official report on tourism “New York City Tourism: A Model for Success.” New and improved hotels are popping up all over The Big Apple, providing planners with an even greater variety of properties with a plethora of services, amenities and value.

New York City

New York City is a hustling and bustling site of new builds and renovations — everything from ritzy properties in Midtown Manhattan to intimate boutique properties downtown. Between 2006 and 2012, New York City saw 95 new hotels in Manhattan and 72 more in the city’s other boroughs, according to the report. Room inventory increased from 78,500 to a record 90,387 and is expected to reach about 110,000 units by 2016. Moreover, in 2012, New York City had more conventioneers than Las Vegas, despite having only 2.3 million sf of convention space compared to Las Vegas’ 10.6 million sf.

The 1.2-million-sf Music City Center made its debut in May. Credit: Music City Center 

In the past, Portland and Austin have reigned as America’s darling hip cities.“Now, it’s Nashville’s turn,” The New York Times noted in January. Last year, Food & Wine named the Music City one of the country’s top metropolises for foodies. And the accolades, whether they’re for food, stunning new hotels or an art exhibit, just keep on coming. It’s no coincidence, then, that Nashville has emerged over the last year as one of the country’s hottest meeting and convention destinations.

The New Music City Center

That lofty status has been aided and abetted by the opening of the new $623 million Music City Center, a 1.2-million-sf convention center; a major expansion of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum to be completed in 2014; and the $250 million, 800-room Omni NashvilleHotel, across from the Music City Center, set to open in September. The hotel, which has 80,000 sf of meeting space, will be fully integrated with the Country Music Hall of Fame’s expansion.

Eric Blanc, CMP, is a tenured professional with more than 20 years of experience in the hospitality industry. He is currently the president of Convention Sales Professionals International and the director of sales, marketing and convention services for the Tampa Convention Center located in Tampa, Florida. He is a graduate of Florida State University with a bachelor of science in business and marketing.

More often than not in the convention industry, there are hard lines that separate sales from services. Finding ourselves in a new era of meetings where budgets are unpredictable, a heavy emphasis must be placed on streamlining operations and creating efficiencies wherever possible. As a result of this new environment, it is imperative for professionals in both sales and services roles to collaborate and embrace each other’s strengths to achieve success.

From the convention center and Destination Marketing Organization (DMO) perspective, there are many of us who recently took a hard look at our available resources and discovered that sales and services could have higher close rates and operate more efficiently and cost-effectively if they worked together rather than as separate entities. Traditionally, each has excelled in their roles often completely independent of each other. Sales works hard to bring the meeting to the destination by proactively prospecting, networking and tailoring pricing for meeting planner customers. Services excels in seeing the meeting through to the end, partnering with the meeting planner to ensure all details of a meeting are executed to client expectations.

Make a Planner’s Life Easier

By blurring the lines between sales and service, we force ourselves to see the meeting from the planner’s point of view. It doesn’t matter what kind of meeting is being planned, having a cohesive team that knows what their venue is capable of accomplishing and its unique features is one that is naturally going to make a planner’s life easier and increase their success rates. In a competitive environment, anything that serves as a differentiator cannot be overlooked. A destination team that clearly demonstrates collaboration between sales professionals and event service managers can be the differentiator if used properly during the sales process. For example, the service professional adds insight and creativity regarding specific factors such as food and beverage, flow and space placement if brought along on a site visit. The sales team can utilize the team as a key selling point and cultivate a long-term partnership based on performance.

“These economic times demand creative thinking and open minds.”

The brilliant Las Vegas Strip lights up the night as seen from Mandalay Bay. Credit: Las Vegas News Bureau

If there is one thing that’s constant about Las Vegas, it’s that it’s always changing.

Long known as the country’s gaming mecca, today the city is just one of many gambling destinations in the U.S. — a motivating force for Las Vegas to constantly reinvent itself. Visitors — and incentive groups — no longer come to Vegas ready to empty their pockets in its many casinos. Instead they are hitting the nightclubs, attending concerts and shows, and dining at high-end restaurants. They want the kind of luxury experience only Las Vegas can offer.

“The idea of luxury still resonates with people,” says Heather Heidbrink, director of sourcing at St. Louis-based Maritz Travel. “Especially if they are incentive award winners. If they’ve earned the trip, they really want to have an experience that is worthy of all the hard work they’ve put in to earn it. So luxury is really important — and Las Vegas has no shortage of that.”

Christine “Shimo” Shimasaki, CDME, CMP, managing director of Em­powerMINT for Destination Marketing Association International, would like to clear up a few misperceptions some planners have about working with convention and visitors bureaus.  “Oftentimes, CVBs are stereotyped as being only interested in large meetings,” she says. “There’s also a big misperception that CVBs would just send (leads) to all of their hotels and not qualify them. We, as an industry, are trying to get over those two stereotypes.

“CVBs have really stepped up to be the best first point of contact for planners who are looking to find the right fit for their meeting — .for any size meeting,” she continues. “When you look at what’s going on in the industry, a lot of RFPs are hitting the hotels. You hear a lot about that. Technology provides a real opportunity for efficiency, but then sometimes technology doesn’t really provide us what we want. The net effect of that convenience is that hotels have seen this huge increase in the number of RFPs hitting their desks, and so that is kind of providing a response problem. So unless planners have their RFP well-articulated and well-targeted, they may not get to the top of the priority list at the hotel level.”

That, she explains, is one area in which seeking the advice of a local expert can be of value. “We need to target the number of hotels or the hotels which the RFP should be sent to. But if the planner is not knowledgeable about a particular destination, not knowing the lay of the land of that destination can be a disadvantage, so we encourage a conversation to occur prior to sending out a full RFP.

In June, in a ceremony in Southampton, England, Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Cambridge (inset) released a bottle of champagne that smashed against the hull of the Royal Princess — the newest ship in the Princess Cruises fleet. Credits: Steve Dunlop Photographer (Her Royal Highness Duchess of Cambridge); Phill Jackson Photography (Royal Princess)

Once upon a time, designing ships with the meeting space, services, amenities and itineraries to accommodate groups wasn’t the highest of priorities for cruise lines. Those days are long gone.

Cruise lines are catering to meetings and incentives with new and refurbished ships that offer more flexible meeting and breakout space, services, amenities and technology. Groups have more options to charter ships and customize meetings and itineraries. There is a cruise package to fit every meeting and incentive budget.

Most important, cruise lines offer value through a growing variety of all-inclusive packages that include meeting space, meals, cabins, amenities, audio-visual and more. “Corporations can save up to 30–35 percent,” says Roy Duckworth, chairman, Global Enterprises Inc., a Burnet, TX-based meeting management and travel company. “People are looking for a bigger bang for their buck. They want more excitement, more options. The incentive market is finding they can do a better incentive with a cruise at a lesser cost, take more people, and it’s very enjoyable. They always want to do it again.”