Unmanaged Meetings Offer Travel Sellers Opportunities: How to Profit

Companies spend billions on corporate meetings in the U.S. every year, yet only a small percentage have this sizable but fragmented spend under management. At the Strategic Travel Symposium, held in mid-March in New York City, the “Building a More Strategic Meetings Management Program” seminar discussed quick wins, risks and long-term ways to maximize the management of meetings.

The panel, moderated by Kevin Iwamoto, vice president of enterprise strategy, StarCite, consisted of Cindy Shumate, executive director, travel & meetings, Estee Lauder Companies, Inc.; Tamara Gordon, director, travel, meetings, fleet at Boston Scientific; and Debi Scholar, founder of The Scholar Consulting Group. During the seminar, they revealed an interesting statistic gathered from StarCite: 80% of meetings are planned in advance but account for only 50% of a company’s meeting budget. It’s those last-minute meetings, perhaps planned spur-of-the-moment, that eat away at half of a company’s program expenditures.

It’s the smaller meetings, those 50 people or less, that are open to the greatest exposure to loss, and those account for 2/3 of all company meetings, noted the presenters. These meetings are usually planned outside of the normal channels, i.e. not through the meeting planning department and instead by personnel in other departments. The reasoning for the loss is five-fold:

1.   Smaller meetings are generally sourced by non-professional planners (perhaps a secretary, administrative assistant or marketing coordinator at the firm).

2.   They are usually overlooked by upper management.

3.   There is no reporting, feedback or tracking of these smaller meetings and their attendee costs, so there’s no accountability structure in place.

4.   Because they are not sourced professionally, cost leveraging opportunities are missed (for example, the booking of multiple programs with one vendor, which often result in cost-savings, is not present).

5.   The shorter lead times leave less chance for cost comparisons, and ensuing negotiations. Under the gun, planners are forced to just accept what hotels offer to them.

Managing the Unmanaged

What can travel sellers do to help companies with this problem and start handling those unmanaged meetings?

Debi Scholar offered these possibilities in an interview with Travel Market Report:

·        Provide meeting planners with site searching for meeting locations (air analysis and hotel analysis) so that the planners (and meeting owners) select the most cost-effective and appropriate location.

·        Encourage the selected hotel to provide meeting planners with the negotiated transient travel rates for small meetings rather than charging often higher group rates.

·        Provide meeting planners with negotiated ground transportation negotiated rates.

·        Partner with a meeting logistics company that can provide discounted services to the planner who needs additional help. A meeting management and logistics company can provide site searches, contract negotiations, planning services, onsite support, payment and reconciliation. Most good meeting management companies are listed in the Global MarketPlace of the Meeting Professional International’s Web site (www.mpiweb.org). Since services may vary as well as be priced differentl, it may be best to use an RFP (request for proposal) to find out which ones can be best to work with and then partner with one or more MMCs (meeting management companies) for future business.

Another option is for the travel seller to partner with a few good independent meeting planners — there are many out there, said Scholar.

·        Include meeting management technology, also known as SaaS (software as a service) so that the meeting planner can use the travel seller’s technology as it relates to attendee registration, housing, invoice reconciliation and other logistics — and make sure it is integrated from the meeting management technology through to the online booking tool so that the information is seamlessly transmitted to those auctioning the requests. Technology providers are listed in the MPI’s Global MarketPlace, but only a few provide all the functionality that a meeting planner really needs. For more help, work with a consultant.

Going for the Business

A planner at a leading site selection firm (who preferred not to be identified) advised cold-calling corporations but instead of asking for  the meeting department, asking for the head of sales and marketing or the head of human resources — two departments that often sponsor meetings. 

“By asking for the vice president of those departments, you’ll inevitably be connected to their admin first, who can give you some direction as to who’s planning those last-minute programs. Offer up your services there to get a foot in the door. I use Linkedin (free) and Zoominfo (www.zoominfo.com), a service with a monthly charge) to get the names of those VPs so I can get connected faster,” she said.

Scholar agreed that LinkedIn can provide the right connections to find people you know who can introduce you to people you don’t yet know and added that you can look in Hoovers, another pay-for-lead service (www.hoovers.com), for a company’s organization chart and then contact procurement and operations leaders, as well as those departments already mentioned.