Meetings Beat - 2001-04-23

<B>Meetings Beat</B>

<B>New York - </B>The tentative nature of the economy is affecting short-term meetings business, as corporations delay booking space until absolutely necessary, said a panel of corporate buyers and hoteliers at BTN's Corporate Travel World here late last month. "Requests for proposals haven't slowed over the past two months, but we are seeing an increased amount of tentative business and delays for meetings we expected to close," said Marietta Baldwin, senior vice president of global sales and development at Starwood Hotels & Resorts. "It's very much a wait-and-see attitude."

Buyers reported varying experiences: Michelle Rubin, director of meeting management firm DRS3, said there likely won't be fallbacks in her corporate clients' meetings until late this year. However, KPMG's director of meeting services, Carol Muldoon, who last year created a base-contract program specifically to address short-term events, said the company's consulting arm has looked to reduce expenditures by using videoconferencing or other technology.

Short-term business is critical for both buyers and suppliers, Baldwin said, as their numbers grew 8 percent and revenue generated grew 12 percent in 2000 from one year earlier.

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Travel and meeting buyers at two large corporations said that bringing transient and group travel operations together offers both financial and organizational synergies, but is not without potential internal hazards.

"The challenge of merging meetings and travel is that the people working in those departments feel what they do is so unique to what the other side does," said John Asselta, director of meeting and travel services for Florham Park, N.J.-based KPMG. "If you can make a real effort to get them working together, you can help them to understand each other's role. We have weekly meetings in the meetings department with no less than two representatives from the travel side." Asselta said KPMG senior management believed transient travel would operate more efficiently if it was combined with the well-regarded meetings department, which he headed.

One key benefit to merging operations is the ability to use both meetings and transient volume to drive business to preferred suppliers to meet both sides' commitments, said PricewaterhouseCoopers director of travel and meetings Mark Williams. "We try to steer both to our preferred hotel and airline partners," he said.

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Internet-based meetings management companies are easing the process of meetings planning and attendance management and creating cost-effective solutions, said meeting buyers at the Planners Chart an Internet Course session.

After the volume and frequency of his company's meetings got out of hand, Tom Walker, manager of travel services for Steelcase Inc., signed with GetThere. Walker estimated annual savings to be $40,000, with potential soft savings at $150,000. GetThere, a corporate-funded, front-end cost estimator that considers policy when evaluating meetings locations, brings the corporate and group cost together, said Mike Malinchok, director of sales with GetThere. Malinchok called the tool a "natural evolution" that integrates group discounts and data storage for future meetings.

Cheryl MacNeal, account manager for B-There, said companies often struggle with a consolidation strategy for multiple events, multiple vendors and the absence of a high-tech solution. B-There's work with Nortel Networks helped streamline the company's management of meeting attendance figures and assist attendees with lodging, she said.