Workplace Shift Ushers in New Mtgs. Strategies

The Covid-19 pandemic has taught employers about how much their employees, after two years of relative isolation, want to meet. “I’ll take myself as an example,” said IHG VP of Americas sales Jonathan Kaplan. “I moved into this role 14 months ago. Up until two months ago, I had not been in a room with my team. It was the eagerness of the team to be together that made it happen. “We weren’t supposed to meet until July, but the team pushed for us to actually move that meeting up to February.”

Business Travel Takes on an “Event” Mindset

There’s broad agreement among  travel suppliers and buyers that the changing workplace has ushered in a new type of business travel. A fall survey of 188 major employers conducted by the Partnership for New York City found that only 8 percent of workers in New York were in the office five days a week; 54 percent were fully virtual and the rest fell somewhere in between. The survey projected those numbers would change by the end of January 2022, but especially the projection for full-time, in-office workers wasn’t particularly strong. Employers estimated 13 percent of workers would be fully in person by that time and 21 percent would still be fully remote. The omicron variant—like delta before it—delayed some of those in-office dreams, but with its milder symptoms and rapid spread, it may also have set the stage for a stronger in-person comeback. Only time will tell, and different municipalities will have different numbers.

What we do know is that the corporate environment has changed. Fewer people are headed to the office on full-time basis, and the move to hybrid will bring both flexibility and frustration. The New York Times recently called it the “worst of both worlds” when a hybrid strategy goes wrong. Bringing people into the office but failing to coordinate timing with critical teammate can force a commute so people can sit in the office on Zoom meetings. It doesn’t have to be that way, but the path forward may be plagued with imperfect return-to-office experiences. 

As the pandemic called the physical workplace into question, the industry saw the writing on the wall fairly early. It projected a different kind of business travel, which some now call “return-to-base” travel, but it doesn’t have to gather people to an actual headquarters location. What it does have to do is provide a critical connection point for teams and collaboration groups and provide a sense that while the workplace may now be remote or hybrid, the company still provides a cohesive touchpoint and a tangible workplace culture and offers purposeful, mission-driven opportunities. That sounds familiar… are we planning events? 

American Express Global Travel Business EVP of global clients and general manager for the Americas David Reimer late last month said it’s really a similar idea—and it positions business travel at a critical juncture as companies look at the future of work.  

“Getting together with a bunch of people—that’s what empowers innovation, cultural understanding and commitment toward company strategy and goals in a far more meaningful way,” he said, “I think business travel is the center of that new company culture.”

Now It Needs Managing

“There’s been a proliferation of booking meetings for smaller volumes that is just absolutely exploding,” said American Express Meetings & Events VP for the Americas Linda McNairy. While not all these are internal team meetings, many are. “We talked to all our suppliers and hoteliers. Everybody’s saying it’s absolutely exploding in terms of how our customers are managing ad hoc get-togethers and how they’re working with clients to manage it.”

A lot of remote teams have been booking their own meetings using simple tools, but there are ways to harness the explosion of small meetings bookings and tools to assemble a solid self-service model, said GoldSpring Consulting partner Will Tate. 

“It’s not dissimilar to what we’ve seen in the transient space, where they moved to mobile booking for lower-value transactions. If they’re small, simple bookings, why not do them automated? It’s a lower-cost channel and doesn’t require the TMC resource,” he said. “Corporations are looking for a self-service model that’s going to allow their employees to source small meetings directly while following their internal policies.” 

The trend to manage smaller, non-centralized meeting activity was underway prior to the pandemic. Suppliers like Bizly, Bizzabo, Groupize, Hubli and others have and garnered investor funding and more clients during the pandemic.

In a 2022 BTN op-ed, Bizly CEO Ron Shah posited that meetings will define the future of business travel. He wrote, “Starting with meetings will lead to a better ROI calculation, much clearer travel justification led by data, and an optimized mobile workforce. Not only would travel programs improve with this configuration but taking this holistic approach would also lead to significantly better experiences for travelers. When you start with meetings, your program managers, support team and travel agents all understand the ‘why’ of the trip throughout the traveler’s journey. This deep sense of understanding is the future of corporate travel.”

Which Venues Will Meet the Need? 

A hybrid workplace may need a hybrid approach to this new type of business travel. One solution is the office itself. Simple meeting platform providers like Hubli and Bizly promoted at BTN’s Innovate Conference last fall their ability to load onsite corporate space into their platforms—giving work teams more control over their in-office meeting plans. 

“A client was talking to me about hybrid best practices for internal meetings, as they are returning to the office,” said McNairy. “They’re using some of their internal space, but they also have people who join remotely at different locations.” 

Work-life balance, health issues or other inhibitors will always be in play in our flexible workplace future. So hybrid capabilities will be required. 

“Work from anywhere” facilities like LiquidSpace, Regus, WeWork and including dedicated event facilities like Convene, which also has day-working spaces, can be an option. Traditional hotel partners are looking to meet the need as well, said Reimer.

“Hotels are really thinking about how they configure solutions with partnering for a meetings and events perspective to make sure we have some readymade propositions,” said Reimer. “And there will be more demand for that.”

IHG’s Kaplan said the hotel company has specific brands that specialize in such scenarios, pointing to Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express and Indigo, and traditional meetings brands are competing for that same business. 

Accor president and CEO Sébastien Bazin in the company’s most recent earnings call forecasted a permanent drop-off in international business travel and alluded to a more focused strategy at Accor to attract smaller, local business to replace that business that would traditionally convene in city centers. 

“You have millions of people living in the city where you never offered them anything to enter your hotel. This is the time to do it,” Bazin said. He predicted “a lot of hybrid meetings” mixing people but at multiple satellite locations “connected through digital to the same event.”

What’s a Traditional Meeting Now?

If at least a portion of traditional business travel is now going to look and act like a meeting, what will a traditional meeting look like? “Hybrid” is a popular word these days.

“The pandemic was a huge accelerant for our virtual and hybrid offer,” said Convene president and COO Amy Pooser. To put it in perspective, “We did the first hybrid meeting in 2011. But it was the pandemic that caused us to double down in building out this virtual platform and building out amazing service experience around that platform.”

That said, it behooves meeting organizers to figure out how much or little hybrid capability an individual meeting or conference will require, and to create policies around it. 

For Pooser, having the hybrid option is an advantage that injects worry-free flexibility into quick-changing environments. “Clients contact us for a physical meeting, but at contract signing, they say, ‘Well, 30 percent of this will be hybrid.’ By the time the event is executed, that’s gone up to 60 percent.”

On the other hand, said ConferenceDirect VP and team director and strategic meetings consultant Deborah Borak, hybrid options can be expensive and organizers need a solid strategy for executing that content, suggesting surveying potential attendees before making buying choices. 

“Maybe it is 10 percent of your group. Or do you have 50 percent who don’t want to travel? Decisions are being made without the knowledge of what attendees really require.” 

There is another aspect to having hybrid options—for live meetings. According to McNairy, “We worked with one customer who had a meeting that was predominantly face-to-face but wanted a hybrid element. Not just for those who couldn’t travel to the meeting, but in case there was anyone during the meeting who got fatigued or overwhelmed by the in-person experience, to say, ‘I’m going to sit this out this afternoon, I’ll join virtually.’ ”

As buzzy and important as hybrid options may be in the current environment, don’t write off the attraction of true in-person events. 

“Some groups have only 50 percent attendance at their conference, and some have seen 100 percent participation or more and had to scramble to get more rooms or space,” said Borak. “A lot is predicated on the group and what discipline they are in. I’ve talked to [organizers] who said, ‘We’re actually having to beg for more rooms because the group is picking up over 100 percent.’ ”