Conference centers have seen an increased demand for their services and are attempting to appeal to meeting buyers by offering additional leisure activities and negotiating contracts that do not include standard complete meeting package pricing. However, property developers are expressing interest in building new conference centers or reconfiguring existing space to offer such services, which potentially could increase supply.
"The conference center industry is doing very well right now, as is most of the hospitality industry," according to Neil Pompan, chief operating officer of meetings and hospitality management firm EMCVenues and president of the International Association of Conference Centers. "As a result, there's been a lot more activity with owners and developers who are considering and in the process of opening new conference centers."
"We are seeing more crossover from hotel buyers to purchasing a conference center arena," said Ann Marie Moayedi, national director of sales for conference center chain Aramark Harrison Lodging.
Meanwhile, existing conference centers hope to ride the wave of stronger corporate meeting demand
(see story)."The economy has allowed companies to loosen the purse strings a little bit in some ways and there is more travel and more meetings," said Warren Woodard, director of sales and marketing at the Evergreen Marriott Conference Resort in Stone Mountain, Ga. "Conference centers have gained in popularity by virtue of exposure and development. We're going to be the benefactor of that, when companies start to hold meetings more frequently."
To have greater appeal to buyers, many conference centers have started to include more hotel-style amenities and leisure options, such as spas and golf courses.
"Meeting planners sometimes considered conference centers as institutional or a little more stark or bare-bones, and not as nice as a hotel," said Woodard. "As the awareness of these really cool conference centers has gotten out, you have a lot more of corporate meeting planners utilizing these because they get the best of both worlds You see more spas. We have 36 holes of golf and a spa, and we are in a resort environment that has family attractions. We turn into a leisure destination on the weekends."
However, for some companies, conference centers still are strictly business.
"We just don't use those services that often. Gone are the days, at least in our organization, where we run a three-day meeting and then stay for another day or two and people go to the spa or play golf. No matter how nice the location, we go in, we have our meeting and we leave," said Tony Pastor, manager of conference services for McKinsey & Co., adding that his workers would much rather spend the extra time at home than at a spa or golf course.
"People in our organization work so hard during their normal week and so hard during learning programs, that the priority is always family," he said.
Conference center operators have said they are seeing more meeting buyers use the per-day, per-attendee complete meeting packages that are the foundation of most centers' pricing.
"The complete meeting package, when compared against hotel pricing, has made it easier for us to gain marketshare because our pricing is so much more of a value than the a la carte pricing from hotels," said Steve Giblin, president and chief operating officer of Dolce International.
"Much like the demand has grown, the percent of our group business that is done at the complete meeting package has grown along with that," Marriott's Woodard said. "As hotel pricing has gone up pretty considerably over the past couple of years, the complete meeting package has become a greater value quite frankly for the meeting customer."
Even so, many meeting planners want the flexibility of hotel pricing, and within recent years conference centers have begun to offer it on a wider scale, either in addition to or instead of the complete meeting package.
"They want flexibility more than ever," said the International Association of Conference Centers's Pompan. "Clients tend to prefer properties that are willing to change the game plan if they have a special need. If a conference center offers three meals a day in their package, but a group wants to do something special at lunch, rather than being rigid and saying, 'I'm sorry, this is the menu,' customers want conference centers that are willing to make changes within the package along the way."
Aramark Harrison's Moayedi sees use of individual pricing as an introduction to the package.
"We absolutely are selling a la carte," she said. "We'll take the customer's needs and we will work according to their needs. If they want to buy a la carte, we will sell a la carte. Our thought process was to get the customer in, and if they want to buy a la carte the first time around, get them in to experience the conference center as a learning and training environment. Then, maybe they'll want to convert to the complete meeting package once they understand it and experience how successful a meeting can be at a conference center."
Benchmark also recently announced plans to offer selections outside of the CMP spectrum
(Meetings Today, April 23).McKinsey's Pastor, who uses conference centers "a lot," said that he always tells conference centers what he needs in his CMP beforehand to save having to "count pens and pencils" later.
"I have a negotiation right up front about the definition of a complete meeting package," he said.
Even with flexible pricing and leisure activities, conference centers are still primarily for meetings. Dolce's Giblin said that "65 percent of our business or more will always be meetings."
"Conference centers are very much and always have been concerned with providing an exceptional meeting experience which has a lot to do of course with the environment as much as it does with the service and the amenities," said Pompan.