Looking ahead … to a slow climb back

We’re fresh out of a tumultuous 12 months. While economists, politicians and the more optimistic among the pundits are feeling the New Year’s spirit and cautiously sending out cheerier predictions, no one expects 2010 to ring in a real turnaround.

By Christine Born

Many convention and visitor bureaus are dealing with tighter budgets and more oversight. Hotels are feeling the crunch from years of ambitious expansions and a buyer’s market that now assumes bargain rates. Meeting planners are trimming their events, cutting corners where possible and even meetings when necessary.

There is movement among top establishment players that might result in some much-anticipated trickle down effect. Bold initiatives inspire confidence — whether it’s Rupert Murdoch’s plan to convert his Web sites to a pay model by the summer or another new device from Apple, which introduced new iPhones in 2009 and profited despite the downturn.

Buoyed by the knowledge that the best leaders know how to turn crisis into opportunity and that pessimism doesn’t stand the test of time, we turned to leaders in the hospitality industry and some association planners to discover what they see ahead.

Fabian De Rozario, President, National Association of Asian American Professionals

Brave New Move: De Rozario says we have to be constantly reinventing or challenging ourselves to do new things. “Play outside your sandbox,” he says. “Explore things outside your realm of business only to discover how inside your business it is.”

Advice: Get creative and extend beyond your core business to build relationships and resources. That doesn’t necessarily mean huge, expensive solutions. As an example, De Rozario suggests that hotels can use slow times to drum up business within the local market by inviting civic groups to a complimentary event introducing their facility and services, thereby creating momentum and a relationship that will generate future business.  “A bunch of small wins will often return more than the big wins we look for,” he says. “As a consumer, I would love to engage with hotel reps that are knowledgeable about services and solutions that are available in the local area. The better resourced the hotel rep is, the more likely I am to choose your hotel over another.”

Relationships mean business. “If you don’t keep good records about what’s important to the relations you make, if you don’t have a clear system to manage all that information, you’re going to lose this race,” De Rozario says. “We’re so good at executing our meetings, but often do a poor job of managing the data and records that are necessary to manage our relationships.”

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Stephen Hahn, Director Western Region Market Sales, Marriott International

A New Reality: Hahn’s message to hotel customers and managers is that both sides need to be partners in adversity. “From a contract standpoint, what might have been agreed upon a few years ago is no longer a reality,” he says. “It’s not a one-way street, or an ‘us and them.’ [In better times] it’s important for us not to say no to customers who were with us in the downtown.”

Advice: “You have to reset your expectation down without causing harm to those organizations you’ll want to do business with in the future. From a customer standpoint, you have to understand that the hotel industry has suffered significantly. We need good communication and flexibility and creativity on the customer’s part to help us maximize our business given what little there is out there.”

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Bonnie Wallsh, CMP, CMM, Meeting Management Consultant and Trainer

Recession-defying Moves: Continuing education, networking and, above all, outstanding customer service are the keys to survival in 2010, Wallsh says. “2010 has the potential of being the most challenging year since I started my business 31 years ago. During the last several months, I have reviewed my business plan, strengthened
existing relationships, reached out to help those around me, sought to become a
Renaissance person and became acutely aware of potential opportunities.”

Advice: Customize your service and become a resource. “Identify needs and figure out how to fulfill them,” suggests Wallsh. “Work your network aggressively, sharing leads and opportunities regardless of whether they will benefit you personally. Maintain a positive attitude. Know about sports, the latest movies, books on the bestseller list, geography (try to learn the capital of every country) and current events. You never know when you can engage a prospective client.”

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Judy Randall, President and CEO, Randall Travel Marketing Inc.

Trends to Watch: Randall says the biggest trends she’s seeing are shortened meetings to cut hotel and other costs; mid-day meetings for drive-in attendees; and planners cutting out extracurricular activities so meetings start purposefully and stay focused
on purpose.

Advice: Content is king. “Everyone wants to know what is going on,” she says. “They want educational content that helps them sort through the volumes of information in their field. Where are the frontiers?” Randall also agrees it’s important to keep your network alive and strong.

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Lisa DeGolyer, Chief Executive, Conferences and Education, Construction Owners Association of America

A New Model: After experiencing a drop in attendance at her 2009 spring conference followed by a fall conference that exceeded all expectations, DeGolyer and her team developed a new model. “We used to move our conferences around the country to draw in new people, but now we are going to cities where we were successful, mainly because we have strong chapters there,” she explains. “We’re supplementing in between conferences with online learning opportunities and taking our course 101 on the road, doing in-house educational conferences for smaller groups.” Smart forecasting tools helped her track all the components of planning. One key element: education. “Change never stops and technology is coming at them so fast we need to educate them on the newest technology that is out there,” she says of the association members, mainly building owners. “Last year, the down economy was new, and people had to stop traveling. They didn’t have the money to spend on education, so we did other things to make up for it that made some money in between conferences. You have to spread energy centers to other things that are profit centers. Our meetings bring in the most ROI but they are labor intensive.”

Advice: “When you see something that works, you keep going,” DeGolyer says of her new approach. Her group also renegotiated all existing contracts to drop room rates and attrition. “We asked them to work with us to help us. You can’t do that with every one, but most worked with us. This is a good time to buy and negotiating is more viable now than it has been in the past.”

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Fran Bolson, President, Woodfiled Chicago Northwest Convention Bureau

Brave New Move: “Whenever we see a major shift in markets (as we see now), we step up prospecting and reevaluate our markets,” Bolson says. “Any ‘brave new moves’ may include dropping out of a market that is not showing ROI and increasing investment in the markets showing activity. We are very aggressive in the use of technology in tracking and communications within our direct sales efforts; however, we still feel strongly about the need for face-to-face meetings and business travel. We are going to use our media campaign to convey that message, using the findings from the Oxford Economics business travel ROI study.”

Advice: Bolson also stresses the importance of education in today’s world. “Be the best in whatever you are doing and if that role is changing, spend some time to see where your position or market is going and be at the cutting edge. Take advantage of any and every development and learning opportunity that is available.” Her final word of advice? “Always answer phone calls.”

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Deb Archer, President & CEO, Greater Madison, Wis., CVB

The Message is the Medium: Archer sees a need for everyone in the industry to collaborate and get the message out that “Meetings Mean Business.” The initiative, launched by the U.S. Travel Association, uses industry research to drive home the value of conferences and events to our economy. “Conferences and conventions are integral components to maintain and grow healthy companies and provide the foundation for generating discussions, ideas and creating solutions,” says Archer. “The GMCVB, the Wisconsin Association of Convention & Visitors Bureaus (WACVB) and the Wisconsin Department of Tourism (WDOT) are so committed to these principles that we will be forming a Wisconsin specific collaboration geared toward local political leaders, business owners and area meeting planners.”

Advice: “The best way to work through this industry-wide recession is to stay true to core competencies,” says Archer. She emphasizes the importance of service, embodied in the bureau’s trademarked brand strategy and statement, “Going Beyond Visit,” defined as the philosophy of going beyond the expected to enrich its partners, community and visitors. Or, as Archer says, “We don’t stop our services with the signed contract.”

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Bruce Turkel, CEO, Brand Management, TURKEL

Changing Perspectives: Turkel’s firm specializes in travel and tourism marketing, branding and advertising. He is an author and frequent speaker for the travel and meetings industry. His message? “Authenticity, affordability, activities, accessibility.” He’s talking about travel. “We look at what we’re good at and we find different ways to express that,” says Turkel.
“A lot of what you come up with after evaluating your efforts is in plain sight.”

Advice: “Stop focusing on what you do and start focusing on what your clients want. Unbundle what you have and deliver it in a different way.”

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[Marketing Moves]

Partnerships with Benefits

Partnerships can bring big returns for both planners and suppliers. Take a lesson from the George Clooney film “Up in the Air,” which is generating buzz for American Airlines and Hilton Hotels. Both are prominently and positively featured throughout the film, though neither company paid for its starring role. Instead, they provided locations and branding that helped defray what would have been huge production costs for Paramount Pictures — a grand example of a mutually beneficial partnership.

“If we were to go and rent an airplane for a movie, it would be very expensive. But if you can get somebody to loan you one as opposed to the production having to buy or rent it out of their pocket because they’d like their product seen in the film, it’s a fair trade for that exposure,” said LeeAnne Stables, Paramount’s executive VP-worldwide marketing partnerships.

Stables also pointed out that in this day and age of reality shows, fake brands would not work as well in a movie depicting the lives of real people, who are involved with brands every day of their lives.

Both American Airlines and Hilton are promoting the movie on their Web sites, where, besides viewing a trailer, visitors can enter “Up in the Air” sweepstakes. Hilton also is promoting the film on more than a million key cards internationally, a first for the chain, whose cards have never featured anything besides its own logos and amenities.

(Spoiler alert: There are also some interesting convention moments in the movie that will be all too familiar to meeting planners.)

Sources: Hotelchatter.com, nytimes.com