<B> Planners Ponder Perks</B>
<I>Starwood Hotels Launches mtgs. Incentive Program</I>
By Chris Davis
Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide has launched its first chainwide meetings program by offering planners points good for frequent flyer miles and free hotel rooms. While planners can reap thousands of points for a single meeting, the Starwood Preferred Planner program highlights potentially sticky issues about how such programs mesh with corporate culture.
Planners who book meetings at Starwood properties, including Sheraton and Westin hotels, will receive a point for every $3 spent on guest room nights, meeting room rental and catering, with a maximum of 20,000 points for a single meeting. Like most initiatives of this ilk, the points can be traded in for airline tickets or rooms. However, not all companies allow their meeting buyers to use the points for personal travel, or even accept them at all.
The question for CFOs or travel department heads is whether such points should be considered equivalent to individual frequent flyer points--often depicted as a harmless perk for an employee whom the company doesn't even have to pay for--or a tool to reduce, however insignificantly, corporate travel cost.
"There's both out there," said Rodd Herron, Starwood's vice president of global sales programs. "I am not seeing more companies take the points themselves for corporate travel. Often bosses use them as a perk for their employees."
Starwood, recognizing that such programs aren't universally embraced, allows for the donation of points to charity. The chain also will award the points to planner, company or attendee, depending on the company's preference.
While hotel loyalty programs have proven effective at luring travelers (BTN, Feb. 22), many planners are unwilling to admit that points play a part in site selection. Few corporations have a policy that specifically addresses whether planners may accept points for their personal use, though many prohibit gifts from vendors over a certain dollar amount.
Whether a company chooses to endorse the practice depends largely on buyers' ethical views, which tend to be rather diverse.
"Points-for-planners programs are unethical and inappropriate marketing campaigns that have no place in the industry," said Anthony Pastor, site and contract specialist for McKinsey & Co. of New York. "It shouldn't have any place in the decision as to whether a site is the right place for a meeting."
The onus, Pastor said, is less on the hotel chains and more on the planners who will accept such points for their personal travel. "Obviously, these things work," he said. "It's different from frequent flyer miles. Those are for people who are flying all the time at the expense of their personal lives. But why should I get the benefit for a meeting? I'd rather they just take care of the planner onsite working 18-hour days."
McKinsey does not have a policy that directly deals with such programs, Pastor said, but the company does forbid gifts from suppliers of more than $100.
David DuBois, COO for Meetings Professionals International, said his association has no policy on the ethics of members receiving such points and said one isn't really needed.
"I don't see professional planners swayed by points," DuBois said.
In fact, DuBois said a few companies may be warming up to the idea of a free perk for their meetings departments.
"I think there's a slight trend toward allowing planners to keep these points," he said. "It's a tight job market, it doesn't cost the company any money, and we're always looking to give employees additional benefits besides cash."
At some point, planners will be able to use Starwood points for MPI's educational programs and materials, DuBois said, but he stressed that Starwood will receive no discount on any product or admission fee. The ratio of Starwood's points to actual dollars for MPI programs hasn't yet been established, he said.
Companies inclined to accept points to be used solely for corporate and meeting travel are faced with another dilemma: Who gets them? A decentralized company, with planners in different departments, might court trouble in any attempt to divvy points up.
Kellogg Co. of Battle Creek, Mich., does not allow its planners to keep all meeting points, said manager of meeting planning and travel services Patricia Stemple, but will allow attendees to keep individual points for themselves.
"If we master-bill the hotel rooms and the hotel was issuing points, I might negotiate those points into some kind of food and beverage function, for example," Stemple said. "But keeping all of them is not something we consider an ethical thing to do."
Stemple said harnessing those points to use for Kellogg's future meeting and corporate travel would likely be more trouble than it's worth. "Let's say the points were from a meeting that crosses departmental lines," Stemple said. "How do you determine how many points can be used by each department? You can create a nightmare for yourself."
Fenton, Mo.-based Unigroup doesn't take meeting points at all, according to Euclid Strayhorn, supervisor of conference services. "It is an ethical issue for us, plus we haven't yet figured out how to take those points and translate them into business volume dollars," he said.
While Strayhorn said the options of giving the points to charity or using them for MPI education materials make accepting points more palatable, the ethical line in these situations is very thin and blurry with no hard-and-fast rules.
"What about getting one complimentary guest room for every 50 booked, or a free hospitality suite?" asked Strayhorn. "Those fall on the other side of the ethical line."
Planners at companies on the flip-side of the argument stressed that such points play no role in meeting site selection and negotiations.
"It's not something that happened very often, and I would never go after it to sign a contract," said Joan Antonelli, manager of meetings and travel with software developer SCT Corp. of Malvern, Pa. SCT allows planners to keep the points in the rare occasions the company receives any. "If it happens, it's fine and icing on the cake, but it's not something you can look at."
The Starwood Preferred Planner program replaces Sheraton's points-based Meetings for Miles program and Westin's planner-recognition Golden Gavel program. "We took the one-to-one ratio of the point-to-frequent-flyer mile of the Sheraton program and combined it with the Westin program, which let hotel employees know that a request from a planner had 50 to 100 attendees behind it," Herron said.
Planners must sign up for Starwood's individual travel program, Preferred Guests, to participate. Besides Sheraton and Westin, Starwood brands including The St. Regis/Luxury Collection, Four Points, W and Caesars are participating in the program.