Meetings ROI goes public and political

By Christine Born

Return on investment has been the mantra for the meetings business for years. Most planners, urged by industry associations to align themselves with accepted business practices, have grown accustomed to the constant demand to prove ROI – to boards, managers and attendees. Now, the mantra has a public face.

After political attacks and what many considered media ridicule that unfairly used some high-profile events to paint all meetings with a broad brush as extravagant and wasteful, meeting planners are answering a call to prove the value of their meetings to the country at large.

A YouTube video by sales and marketing consultant Keith Ferrazzi that delivers a pretty convincing pitch on “Why Meetings Matter” is being passed around on Web sites and by word of mouth. On the Web site launched by the U.S. Travel Association to support its “Meetings Mean Business” campaign, the message is reinforced with the many faces of hospitality workers – from concierge to housekeeping staff – whose jobs are threatened by cutbacks in travel. Visitors to the site are asked to join in by speaking out about why meetings and travel are important to them.

Similar messages are being delivered at the Meeting Industry Crisis Center powered by Meeting Professionals International, as well as other meeting planning Web sites. And the Twitter network is fueling the fire with fast-proliferating news bites and comments on the subject.

Recent headlines indicate that the efforts to prove the importance of meetings to company bottom lines and the country’s economy are paying off. A rash of articles in the weeks after the campaigns were launched carried stories about the importance of face-to-face meetings and their financial contribution to the economy, especially in terms of jobs and tax revenues at the federal, state and local levels. “Don’t Blame the Business Trip,” “Travel Industry says bailout rhetoric goes too far” and, finally, “White House says it encourages business travel” were among the headlines from major media outlets, which seemed to be churning out the supportive stories as fast as they were spilling out reports of “executive excesses” in the wake of insurance giant AIG’s annual meeting a few months earlier.

Another article, “Congress ‘Hypocrisy’ on Trips Angers Hotel Executives,” reported on travel by senators of both parties for political meetings in Florida that included some amenities similar to ones the U.S. Senate criticized just two weeks earlier when it passed a measure limiting “luxury” spending for corporate travel by recipients of federal bailout funds.

Industry watchdogs latched onto the trips as more ammunition in their campaign to prove the value of meetings and tone down the rhetoric against business travel, pointing to the obvious importance the senators placed on meeting their supporters in person. According to the story on Bloomberg.com, the senators boarded the planes for Florida the same day that San Francisco-based Wells Fargo & Co., which received $25 billion in bailout funds, canceled a four-day event in Las Vegas for fear of sending mixed signals to the public. Frits van Paasschen, president and chief executive of White Plains, New York-based Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc., commented that the Florida trip “speaks to the point that getting out and traveling is important.”

The case for meetings ROI is playing out on many fronts these days. In the long run, the campaigns may have a lasting impact on an industry that has often stayed on the sidelines of business news-and on planners who are more armed than ever before with information that proves the value of their meetings and events.