Meetings Market Report 2008 -- Corporate

Results from the 2008 Meetings Market Report, a comprehensive analysis of meetings held in 2007, show the corporate sector continues to be healthy, despite a small 5 percent drop in expenditures compared with the numbers gathered two years ago. More than $30 billion was spent on 1,080,400 meetings that were attended by more than 84 million people.

Dollars explained

Corporations each spent an average of $543,900 on meetings in 2007, up about 1.5 percent from 2005. Breaking this average down, 21 percent of the respondents said their organizations paid more than $1 million on off-premises meetings, with 39 percent saying their companies spent between $150,000 and $1 million. Still, 40 percent said their firms paid less than $150,000 for all meetings in 2007.

Analyzing where events took place, downtown properties once again hosted the largest share of meetings, garnering 39 percent of corporations’ annual expenditures in 2007. Airport hotels came in second, with 19 percent of the expenditures, followed by suburban hotels (12 percent), suite hotels (8 percent) and resort hotels excluding golf resorts (7 percent). This is a slightly different picture than in 2005, when the top five were led by downtown hotels (36 percent), followed by resorts (21 percent), suburban properties (13 percent), golf resorts (8 percent) and airport hotels (7 percent).

The results also show corporations spent 88 percent of their meeting dollars on domestic meetings and 12 percent on foreign/offshore meetings.

The gatherings

Overall, the corporate respondents arranged an average of 19.4 events last year, up from 17.9 in 2005. These meetings were attended by an average of 78 people, down from 150 two years earlier, and the events lasted 2.7 days, up slightly from 2.6 in 2005. For details on the types of meetings planned, see the chart, “On the Agenda,” below.

The corporate planners surveyed indicated their lead time was an average of six months from the start of the planning process until the facility selection, and about a year from the start of the planning process until the event took place. Fifteen percent of the sample said their lead time had increased, 57 percent said it was unchanged and 28 percent said the lead time had shrunk.

More than half (53 percent) of the corporate planners worked on trade shows in 2007, virtually unchanged from the 52 percent reported two years ago. They planned an average of 9.1 such events (up from 8.1 in 2005), attracting an average of 1,210 attendees (down from 1,450 in 2005). The 263,100 trade shows held in 2007 lasted an average of 3.3 days.

Where to go

When evaluating destinations, the corporate planners surveyed said they began their searches with an average of 4.4 cities on their selection list, the same number as reported two years ago. The top three cities -- Chicago (cited by 30 percent of the respondents), Las Vegas (28 percent) and Orlando (25 percent) -- held the same spots as in 2005; New York City (20 percent) and San Francisco (18 percent) rounded out the current top five.

California (cited by 76 percent of those surveyed) and Florida (66 percent) were numbers one and two on the list of top states, the same spots they held in 2005. Texas (37 percent), Illinois (36 percent) and Nevada (30 percent) took spots three, four and five.

Outside the continental United States, 41 percent of the respondents held foreign/offshore events in Europe (other than the United Kingdom and France), the Caribbean (36 percent), Mexico (32 percent), Hawaii (27 percent) and Asia (26 percent). Not surprisingly, the figure for meetings in Asia grew by 10 percentage points from 2005.

Delving further into foreign/offshore meetings, 35 percent of those surveyed were involved in planning an average of 4.7 of these events. The average number of attendees was down slightly, from 178 in 2005 to 164 in 2007, and the duration was a bit shorter at 3.9 days, compared with the 4.3 days recorded two years earlier.

Why to go

When choosing destinations for events other than group incentive trips, the availability of hotels or other facilities suitable for meetings was the top factor, indicated by 80 percent of the respondents. Cost was critical, too, as 75 percent ranked the affordability of the destination as a very important factor. Rounding out the top five were the ease of transporting attendees to the destination (64 percent), its safety and security (63 percent) and the distance traveled by attendees (62 percent).

Narrowing their decisions down to the facilities, 82 percent of those surveyed cited both the number, size and quality of meeting rooms, and negotiable food, beverage and room rates as the most important factors. Again, affordability played a part, as 81 percent of the sample said the cost of the hotel or meeting facility was very important in the selection process. They also rated the quality of the food service high (75 percent), as well as the number, size and quality of sleeping rooms (74 percent).

Corporate planners surveyed paid an average room rate of $184, up 14 percent over 2005’s average of $161. They had an average of 6.7 hotels on their selection lists, compared with 7.2 two years ago.

Tech talk

Checking in on respondents’ computers, about a quarter (26 percent) of the corporate meeting planners surveyed said they used specific meeting planning software, with 21 percent saying they worked with StarCite, 20 percent with an in-house program, 11 percent with Cvent and 35 percent “other.”

Use of the Internet became commonplace: Only 1 percent of the sample said they did not use websites for meeting planning purposes. Corporate planners said individual hotel or chain sites (66 percent), convention and visitor bureau sites (59 percent) and Google (55 percent) were the places they went most often for web help with meetings. Almost half (47 percent) of the sample generated an online request for proposal in 2007, up from 43 percent in 2005.

Most corporate meetings still didn’t have their own websites, as 53 percent of the planners surveyed indicated; that number was virtually unchanged from two years earlier. Sixty percent of the corporate planners said their attendees were able to register for meetings online, either on the Internet (64 percent) or on an intranet (36 percent).

More video and web conferences took place in the corporate world. Forty percent of those surveyed held these events in 2007, up from 32 percent in 2005. Only 24 percent said video and web events had replaced face-to-face meetings.

Corporate Planners

The 2008 Meetings Market Report took a demographic snapshot of corporate planners, revealing a portrait that shifted slightly from our last survey two years ago. About three-quarters of the 447 corporate planners were female (72 percent, compared with 73 percent in 2006), and the average age rose, to 48.4 years from 45.1 years. Examining the graying trend more closely, 66 percent of the respondents were between 40 and 59 years old, unlike two years ago, when 65 percent of corporate planners surveyed were between the ages of 35 and 54.

The expertise of the sample just gets deeper and deeper. This year’s respondents had an average of 13 years of meeting planning experience, up from 10.1 years in 2006 and 9.2 years in 2004. Those with fewer than five years of experience made up just 14 percent of group, significantly down from 28 percent two years ago. The largest number, 25 percent, had between five and 10 years of meeting planning experience.

Unchanged was the amount of time corporate planners spent working on meetings. On average, slightly more than half (53 percent) of the workday was taken up with planning meetings, the same percentage as in the 2006 report. They continued to hold high-level responsibilities for decision-making. Eighty-eight percent of planners selected meeting hotels or facilities, and most (81 percent) chose the meeting destinations. About three-quarters (72 percent) planned entertainment, social functions or sports tournaments, and established the meeting’s budget (70 percent). More than half (53 percent) of the corporate sample planned meeting agendas, and 45 percent established meeting objectives.

There was a jump in the number of corporate planners who held industry certifications or association memberships. Of those surveyed, 19 percent were Certified Meeting Professionals, compared with 11 percent two years ago; and 4 percent were Certified Meeting Managers, up two percentage points. More than a quarter (28 percent) of the corporate planners belonged to Meeting Professionals International. They also were members of the Society of Incentive & Travel Executives (5 percent), the Professional Convention Management Association (4 percent), the Society of Government Meeting Professionals (3 percent), and the Financial and Insurance Conference Planners association (3 percent). Ten percent chose “other,” indicating they belonged to industry organizations such as the National Business Travel Association or the International Special Events Society. Almost 60 percent of planners did not belong to any industry associations.

Corporate planners held mostly meeting planning or convention management titles (30 percent) or posts as executive or management (24 percent); general administration or management (17 percent); or sales and marketing (11 percent). Eighteen percent selected “other.”