Two years after Maritz Inc. sold its corporate travel operation to Carlson Wagonlit Travel, the company has staked as its turf high-touch corporate meetings and events. Maritz Inc. chairman and CEO Steve Maritz in New Orleans last week sat down with Meetings Today editor Corrie Dosh to discuss meetings and incentive travel.MT: The company recently announced it would sell a controlling stake in its European operations to The Grass Roots Group in the United Kingdom
(Meetings Today, May 1). Why are you pulling out of Europe as your competitors expand their operations overseas?
Maritz: Well, remember it's a partnership with equity. We are true partners in a joint venture, if you will, in Europe and we have an equity stake in the parent as well. It's a partnership, but a partnership with teeth. Every market is a little bit different and we felt that they have a good reputation and do a good job. For us to focus on our core markets and they on theirs and yet coordinate on behalf of customers was really the best of both worlds.
MT: This year, several large travel management companies—many of whom target corporate meetings management—have consolidated. Where do you see Maritz's competitive position?
Maritz: We feel good about our competitive position. We're winning more than our share. Our focus is on trying to better understand why customers are buying what they buy and then helping them to better achieve their goals. You don't do a meeting just for the sake of the meeting, you do the meeting to accomplish some business objective. You don't run an incentive program just for the fun of it, you do it to accomplish some business objective. By understanding more broadly what that objective is and bringing more tools to help accomplish that, we think we can have some competitive advantage over the other guys.
MT: Is any part of Maritz for sale?
Maritz: We're not really looking to sell anything, no.
MT: How about acquisitions? Are you looking to expand the company?
Maritz: Well, we're always open to buying something. If the right deal comes along, then absolutely. The core focus is always on organic growth. To me, that's the best measure of success, that you're really developing winning strategies and executing them well, if you're getting organic growth. Acquisitions have to be somewhat opportunistic in nature because you can't force somebody to sell. You always want to keep your eyes open and develop the relationships that may lead to that—but it takes two.
MT: In the past, it seemed you targeted individual event management over strategic meetings consolidation services. Does that still hold true?
Maritz: Those two are consistent with one another, as far as we're concerned. Consolidation is primarily around getting control, whether it's cost or consistency. The fact remains that the money you spent on events is spent for a purpose, and measuring the effectiveness of that and helping make them more effective to us is part of the same equation. Those are not contrary goals. Those are two elements of the customer value equation, both of which we're focused on.
MT: Do you more see customers combining transient and meetings management? Is that a market you serve?
Maritz: That's been a topic that's been debated around in this business forever. The transient business to me is primarily about the transaction with an airline booking, hotel booking or perhaps a car rental booking. For meetings that require nothing more than that, that's perfectly appropriate. When you start to get into meetings that for whatever reason, because of size or because of the content or the attendees, require a lot more touch, then you start to enter a fundamentally different territory. It becomes more about the service and the experience. There's not a clean line between those and that's where the controversy and the discussion in this industry have centered on over the past 10 years. That's the DMZ: what is and what isn't a service-based meeting or event versus a transaction-based meeting or event. Certainly, today there's not a clear definition over what is or what isn't, so I suspect that will continue for the foreseeable future to be a subject that gets fought over between those two camps. The high-touch meetings are really where our sweet spot is and so we bump up against that transactional-based business all the time, just as they bump up against us.
MT: When your customers have a transactional need, is that a service you offer?
Maritz: We do from time to time, depending on the customer and their needs, but oftentimes that may be better handled by their corporate travel provider. We have to be good at the transactional side, as part of the overall meetings business. Particularly when you get into consolidation, that is something we see as clearly part of our turf in managing the overall spend. While it might not all be high-touch meetings, the process of the whole meeting spend is something that requires time and attention and is about the effectiveness of those meetings. From our perspective, when it gets down to effectiveness, we want to play in that space. If it's about just the transaction alone and nothing more, then we recognize that belongs over with the corporate travel provider.
MT: Two years after the sale to CWT
(Meetings Today, March 29, 2004), are you open to returning to transient business?
Maritz: We're not really interested in going back there.
MT: What's the plan for the company in the near future?
Maritz: Onward and upward. Our business is good and getting better and we have a lot of very good customers that like us and like what we do for them. We're going to continue to focus on what our customers need to be successful and use that as our guide for where we're going to invest and grow. That philosophy has served us well in the past and I suspect will continue to serve us well in the future.
MT: Maritz moved its annual sales conference outside of St. Louis for the first time in 11 years in a show of support for New Orleans. What is Maritz's role in the city's recovery?
Maritz: During the hurricane and after the hurricane, everybody with a conscience felt that they wanted to do something to help out New Orleans and its people, and yet it's difficult to find a way to do so productively. While our opportunity to help in the immediate aftermath of the disaster was limited, the idea that we bring our salespeople down here and see for ourselves the state of New Orleans and its readiness to bring back events, meetings, conferences and incentives seemed appropriate and right.