<B> Meetings Beat</B>
<B>NW/KLM Int'l Zone Fares Due This Month</B>
Gail Bill, Northwest Airlines' senior manager of meeting and incentives sales, said the new systemwide Northwest/KLM international zone fare program (<I>Meetings Today</I>, May 18) should be available to meeting planners "towards the end of June." Like other zone fare offerings, Bill said, the prices will have a 21-day advance purchase requirement. The international zone fares are a first for both KLM and Northwest.
<a name="art2"><B>Marriott Makes More Meetings Space</B>
Marriott Conference Centers later this year will announce the construction of three new conference centers, one on the West Coast and two in the East. Susan Morris, national director of sales and marketing, said the new conference centers, which will each have 350 guest rooms or less, will be complete in 18 to 24 months. Each will include golf courses and be located within one hour of a major metropolitan area.
Like the new facility that Marriott will open in conjunction with the University of Cincinnati next year, the new centers will each be equipped with T-1 lines and other state-of-the-art equipment. Morris also said revenue at the dozen current Marriott Conference Centers increased by 22 percent in 1997.
<a name="art3"><B>MPI Puts WEC On The Web</B>
Meeting Professionals International has launched its World Education Congress Without Walls, an interactive brochure for the 1998 WEC, July 12 to 14 in San Diego. Specifics regarding educational offerings--such as the Corporate Special Interest Group-sponsored presentation on the impact of the Internet on the meeting planning process, led by Jeffrey Rasco and Corbin Ball--can be accessed through MPI's Website at http://www.mpiweb.org.
<a name="art4"><B>PCMA Seeks Meeting Standards</B>
The Professional Convention Management Association has completed a study to determine the feasibility of establishing accepted practices in the meetings and conventions industry.
The seven proposed areas for standardization are meeting and site profile, terminology, meeting history and post report, resumes and BEOs, housing, RFPs/booking inquiries and other areas of the industry that require contracts, including transportation, attractions, convention centers, hotels, audio visual suppliers, speakers and entertainment.
"We were asked to ascertain the feasiblity and mechanics on how to go about doing this," said David Noonan, deputy executive vice president, American Academy of Opthomologists, San Francisco, head of the first task force on the job. "We weren't asked to actually do the job. Yet."
Noonan's task force sent out a request for proposals to professional planning organizations seeking assistance as to what approaches could be undertaken in reaching their goal. "Once we get the approach back, we will go to the Convention Liaison Council and the American Society of Association Executives and seek a budget so we might begin actual work in September," he said. "There are a lot of 'ifs' involved: If we get a suitable RFP back, if we get a budget. There's a long way to go."
The exact areas for standardization would be developed by the CLC executive committee with input from other meeting industry organizations. Noonan said it will take at least two years to generate the first model and noted that five years to finish the project is a conservative estimate. He said his task force is listening to the feedback expressed by many elements of the industry to establish accepted practices.
PCMA executive director Roy Evans said planners currently send four different resumes to four different hotels, who translate them into their own speak. "We want a standard resume format for everyone, a meeting planning bible," he said. "What we have done is inititate the concept and then hand it off to gain industry-wide acceptance."
<a name="art5"><B>Colleges Develop Incentive Courses</B>
The Society of Incentive & Travel Executives has put together a lecture presentation on performance incentives that it plans--in conjunction with the Academic Relations Committee--to enter into college curricula. Georgian College of Barrie, Canada, and Virginia Tech of Blacksburg, Va., already have integrated the program into their fall schedules.