DMAI Launches Meeting Venue Research Tool

Destination management organizations, competing for business in a tough, highly competitive environment, recently introduced a new Web-based tool to help planners research, compare and select meeting venues.

Called empowerMINT.com, the system was launched by Destination Marketing Association International (DMAI) earlier this year after an extended beta test. According to Christine Shimasaki, managing director of empowerMINT, the tool was created to meet the needs of planners facing reductions in staff and other resources while simultaneously dealing with “a need to do more due diligence than ever on venues.”

During the last nine months, including the beta test and post-launch period, more than 1,600 planners have used the system, mostly to research destinations and compare them, she said.

EmpowerMINT allows a planner to submit a single RFP to multiple destinations. The system then returns responses from DMOs that fit the planner’s criteria; it allows the planner to compare the information on identical templates – and then to export data to an Excel spread sheet. EmpowerMINT is an extension of MINT, which stands for Meetings Information Network, a long-running database used by DMAI.

It’s in DMAI’S interest to make its member DMOs (also known as convention and visitors bureaus) valuable to planners to enhance the chances of a conference choosing a specific city, Shimasaki said. The new system, funded by DMOs and other sources, allows DMOs to market their venues directly to planners.

“We have provided a cost-free system for planners,” Shimasaki said, “to connect them with an expert who will advocate for them at the local level. This is a total value proposition for planners.”

Research-Intensive
DMAI’s research showed that the average planner looked at three to nine destinations every time they sought a new meeting location. “We found that planners would send out electronic RFPs, then sit around and wait for responses,” she said. “We know they need a local relationship that will save them time and money and provide an efficient way to do business.”

EmpowerMINT “makes it easy and simplifies the research and process of connecting with a CVB. There are other search engines to help a planner find a hotel but we’re not about that. We are about how to connect with and find a local expert to help planners. Besides, no one knows the local hotel scene better than a DMO expert.”

Planner Participation
Chuck Potter, CMP, senior manager, conference, meetings & expositions for the American Animal Hospital Association in Lakewood, Colorado, has been planning meetings for 30 years – but frequently found himself frustrated when researching venues for the AAHA’s annual convention of 3,000 to 4,000 delegates, as well as periodic smaller meetings.

As a result, Potter was happy to serve as the meeting planner representative on a board of advisors for the development of empowerMINT.

“I was having issues trying to locate potential sites for my meetings,” Potter told Travel Market Report. “I found myself searching so many outlets, not being able to find a single source with a nice thumbnail view of a city.” He said there are many sources of venue information – including hotel salespeople, industry meetings, social media and more – but no central source for that information.

Potter believes that a DMO should be the place to start a search, especially “if you can talk to a live person.” He explained, “When you send an RFP through the Internet, you never know who you’re going to hear back from. I want to qualify my contact, and empowerMINT aims to do that.”

Vicky Betzig, CMP, an independent meeting planner and president of Improving Meetings & Conventions in Brookfield, Wisconsin, said, “This is a tool that allows you to do your job so much more quickly. It enables you to skip a step that can be incredibly time-consuming.” While empowerMINT might not lead to the ultimate destination choice, she said, “it will certainly narrow the choices to two or three.”

Betzig believes that empowerMINT is applicable for any size or type of meeting and for planners with any level of experience. “It is probably even better for novices,” she added. “It walks you through all the information you need to submit, sometimes information a novice might not think of.”

The thinking behind empowerMINT, said Potter, “is to get meeting planners to use DMOs as a primary source. Their first stop should be the city and a person who knows everything there is to know about that city. They can do the investigating of dates, rates and space for you.”