MPI: Mtg. Cancellations Decreasing

The flood of meeting cancellations in the immediate wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has abated, according to a new survey conducted by the Meeting Professionals International Foundation, with sharp declines in cancellation rates this month and beyond.

However, some companies have continued to cancel events due to poor economic conditions, as many were before the destruction of the World Trade Center. Granted, a significant portion of the current economic weakness is a direct effect of the attacks, so pointing to one or the other as the cause of meeting cancellations may be disingenuous.

Regardless, MPI Foundation found that about 87 percent of the 110 respondents to its poll canceled at least one meeting that would have been held between Sept. 11 and Oct. 31, a percentage that plummets to 45 percent for November and December meetings, and 26 percent for events booked for next year.

"It was certainly no surprise that there was a rash of cancellations, but in the past few weeks that has dropped off dramatically," said Mark Sirangelo, chairman of the Dallas-based foundation. "Whatever effect Sept. 11 had, it seems to have had it already. Now, it's at least as likely that meetings are canceled due to economic conditions."

Sirangelo added that the cancellation slowdown does not mean everything's rosy, corporate meeting-wise: Many buyers still report attrition and shortened events, particularly those where attendance is not mandatory. But, he said, it appears corporations are at least taking measures to hold meetings, rather than cancel.

"Corporations are making decisions to regionalize events or consolidate two meetings into one," Sirangelo said. "These are business decisions. Cancellation due to the economy is a decision based on pure numbers, and they're not seeing the reciprocal benefits of meetings."

Corporate buyers agreed that most of the issues they're facing now regarding cancellation are economic. "We only had to cancel two or three small meetings, and we moved some others to November and December," said Bill Mattes, manager of meetings and travel management at Jersey City, N.J.-based Insurance Services Offices Inc. "We've kept the meetings at the same properties, unless there wasn't availability. We've moved forward with our largest meeting this month. It's still doing pretty well, but it's considered nonessential travel, so we'll get hurt with that, but not so badly."

"Some extremely small meetings were canceled; most were delayed or rescheduled, but not canceled," said Tonsie McAden, global meetings program manager for Vivendi Universal in New York. "Basically, we just moved the ones scheduled for the fall into the spring."

Many buyers, though, reiterated that the necessity of meetings were under the corporate microscope long before Sept. 11, so returning to pre-attack levels doesn't necessarily mark much of a comeback.

"We were moving most of our meetings onsite before 9/11 anyway, and we've been very conservative with bookings," said Gail Rubenstein, director of corporate travel and meeting services at Hasbro Inc. of Pawtucket, R.I. "We've postponed a few events for a few months, and we'll send fewer people to some of the large industry shows. It's not business as usual yet, but business goes on. We've received calls from so many hotels, and I feel bad for them."

The MPI Foundation released its findings after a summit meeting in New York late last month attended by representatives from several industry organizations. The group, while not actually committing to new measures, developed several possible initiatives to further industry recovery, including the staging of a global security conference, a new benchmark of standard industry cycles to identify potential future trends, a database of techniques used in the past to successfully stimulate meeting demand, new educational modules and an industrywide Web site to share pertinent information and techniques.