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In Defense of Meetings

The United States Treasury Department has recently bailed out a lot of companies, accompanied by threats of pulling out support if the floundering businesses fail to pinch their new pennies tightly. These companies, in the name of creating a new image of prudence and clean living, are worried about their image with the public as well as the government. The end result is that they are eliminating what others see as unnecessary spending, expenses that may increase their viability in the long run.

One of those expenses is meetings and conferences. While the community may view a company that holds a conference on the public dollar as spendthrifts who do not deserve help, they fail to realize that meetings are a critical part of a large, functioning company. They are also critical to the success of the hotel and travel industries, and hotel professionals in the sales departments worldwide need to be on the lookout for new ways to sell their wares.

Statistics

Meeting professionals should be ready with numbers when talking to companies about holding meetings. The industry has helped create around one million careers, and almost 90% of those who have attended an out-of-town meeting say conferences are crucial to strong business. This makes the meeting industry part of the solution to economic woes instead of part of the problem.

Incentives Encourage Business

Event planners need to convince companies that incentive travel is an investment in their finest assets–their people. Top sales performers, hard working executives, and workers who consistently outperform statistical norms consistently deserve to be recognized in some way. If their companies don’t recognize their efforts, another company will.

Planning Time

The seclusion required for think-tank type planning is rarely–if ever–accomplished within the company’s own walls. Creativity is encouraged by taking people out of their familiar situations and placing them in environments where their synapses are bound to fire in unique ways. A company that expects different results with the same old thing is writing a recipe for disaster. Einstein once defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Meeting planners and hotel professionals need to work together to present to the public and to companies reason why conferences stir creativity and are critical to the advancement of business. Otherwise, the pond will just grow stagnant, fester, and eventually become toxic to all.

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