Delta Teams With Boston Conf. Center

Offering the convenience of an airport venue plus the added value of a facility dedicated to business meetings, Delta Shuttle, Boston Coach and the Exchange Conference Center at Boston Fish Pier are collaborating on a program called "The Meeting Connection."

Delta and its partners are betting that a significant portion of the 30,000 corporate personnel who ride the shuttle monthly between New York and Boston can be persuaded to gather by the water instead of at Logan Airport.

While convention centers have partnered with hotels and airlines in the past, this is believed to be the first arrangement between a conference center and an airline, said manager of Delta Shuttle administration Arthur Tupper.

While the sales staff at both the Ramada and Harbor Hyatt airport properties did not have statistics on the number of meetings held there, both said they are "extremely busy," indicating a high demand for another facility close to the airport.

Meeting Connection events will be booked by the staff of the Exchange Conference Center, a waterfront facility recently restored by the Massachusetts Port Authority and located about two miles from the airport.

"This program is designed to simplify the planning process-with it, ground transportation need not be an additional worry for planners," said Marian Ward Lent, director of marketing for the World Trade Center, which is next door to the The Exchange Center.

Ward Lent explained that while the program isn't a package discount, it is an affordable way to use a first-class facility at arm's length from the airport: The trip through the Ted Williams tunnel takes about four minutes.

"With the scheduling demands that everyone is dealing with, airport meetings are increasingly popular," she said. "Our program offers planners another time-saving option."

The program follows the first rule of intelligent planning: Keep it simple. Delta Shuttle commuters arrive at Logan Airport and go to the ground transportation area, where a Boston Coach vehicle will be waiting to drive them to the pier. They arrive moments later at the entrance to the three-story brick-and-glass facility.

Because the new tunnel is reserved for commercial vehicles, tie-ups are rare. "Before the Ted Williams was built, the idea of running a program like this would have been difficult because the Callahan and Sumner Tunnels that handle the majority of the airport traffic can really be time consuming," Tupper said.

"Most conference facilities are dealing with a double-edged sword when it comes to the issue of remoteness," said Tom Bolman, executive director of the International Association of Conference Centers. "On the one hand, planners who choose conference centers want the limited distractions of a dedicated business environment away from the hub of a downtown area. On the other hand, anything more than an hour away from an airport is probably too remote. This facility seems to have the location that will allow them to be accessible but still promote distraction-free meetings."

At a reception held to announce the new alliance, corporate buyers got a look at the facility, which has hosted about 200 meetings since it reopened in June after an eight-month renovation.

Jude Draper, travel and corporate meetings manager for Genrad in Concord, Mass., was extremely impressed with the facility's location, design and audiovisual capabilities. She said that as the president of the New England Business Travel Association, she and other members of the group have already booked the space for a technology conference in April.

But Amy Altman, manager of corporate communications for Filene's in Boston, said that while the facility is "beautiful and the technology is pretty impressive, I probably wouldn't suggest it to our travel department because of the fish smell and the environment immediately surrounding the facility."

The center's technology includes videoconferencing, multimedia and computer-generated graphics equipment. The facility has 11 conference and seminar rooms designed for small meetings. Its grand lecture hall is built with a three-story atrium and full-touch panel-control audiovisual equipment.