The Convention Industry Council last month accepted the National Business Travel Association as a member organization, signifying the growing number of corporate travel managers that are involved in sourcing meetings and events, according to Mary Power, president and CEO of CIC. The council also has marked the 20th year of its certified meeting professional program, and Power said 10,297 individuals in 26 countries have earned the Certified Meeting Professional designation.
Bill Connors, executive director and chief operating officer of NBTA, will serve as the association's representative to the CMP board of directors, Power said. NBTA, which offers the Certified Corporate Travel Executive designation, first appointed a groups and meetings committee in March 2003
(Meetings Today, April 28, 2003)."NBTA has their own designation, but they're finding that, as procurement becomes more of a factor and as departments merge, fewer and fewer companies have a separate meeting planning department and corporate travel department," Power said.
Membership in CIC is "a logical step" for NBTA as they address strategic meetings management, Connors said in a release.
One of the ways CIC tracks the effectiveness of the CMP certification program is to track meeting industry job posting boards. On the six job sites that CIC monitors, 80 percent of jobs offered require or prefer a CMP.
"It will be interesting to see now with the travel departments, if there is going to be a genesis toward their job postings with the CMP required or CMP preferred," Power said.
CIC adjusts the certification exam every five to 10 years to reflect the changing roles of meeting professionals, Power said, and the council recently has begun to study the results of the latest job analysis survey.
"There really wasn't anything that came up that was so totally different than what people did 10 years ago," Power said. "There were some big changes, though, in emphasis, strategic planning being one of them."
With the diversity of membership in CIC, exemplified by the addition of NBTA, and the wide array of professionals applying for the CMP certification, the possibility of creating multiple levels of CMP designation has been raised, said John Parke, chair of the CMP board of directors.
Passing the mark of 10,000 CMPs this year is a sign of future development, and the number has doubled in the past five years, Parke said. "It's a visible representation of the fact that the meetings industry is moving more toward professionalism," he said.
About 300 CMPs are based outside of North America, Parke said, reflecting CIC's recent efforts to spread the certification globally by offering exams overseas and making questions country-neutral. "We see that number growing significantly over time as we get more exposure in other countries," he said. "It's an education process and an engagement process."
CIC first offered the CMP exam abroad in Singapore in 2003. The association later this year will release the CIC International Manual, which will define international meeting practices and be used as the primary study text for CMP candidates in preparing for international content on the exam, Power said.