Planners Report Shorter Lead Times; Same Seen For '97

On the threshold of a brand-new year, not only are corporate planners being asked to do more on tighter budgets, they increasingly are being told to do it faster as short lead times for meetings continue to be the norm.

Negotiating, site selection and booking at near-breakneck speeds is par for the course, data generated from<I> Meetings Today</I>'s Meetings Monitor survey confirms.

Of the 219 planners polled, less than 15 percent predicted that the hectic schedules they have been working under would cool off by way of longer lead times in 1997. Almost three-quarters said their schedules would stay the same. During the past year, 16 percent said they'd experienced lead times of 31 to 60 days, while 14 percent said they had been required to plan their meetings in 61 to 90 days. More than 15 percent had been required to do so in three to six months.

In the Midwest, 13.5 percent of planners reported a lead time of three to six months, contrasting with 16.7 percent of planners based on the East Coast and 26.7 percent on the West Coast. For time frames of 30 days or less however, 13.5 percent of Midwest planners reported activity, compared with 5 percent on the East Coast and 6.7 percent on the West Coast.

Shrinking lead times might not be particularly important in a different type of hotel market, but the current situation of sold-out cities means that short lead times are just another source of frustration for already overtaxed planners (See story, Page 17).

"I've experienced a significant shrinkage of lead time," said Bill Severson, manager of commercial services for Allen-Bradley Co. in Milwaukee. While he attributes shorter time frames mostly to the company's decentralized organizational structure, he said the pace of business is a major contributing factor as well.

"Our area managers will contact me on very short notice to announce a product rollout; then something in the production schedule will change and they'll have a meeting in several phases," he said. "This results in several short-notice sessions to keep everyone informed."

Because of Allen-Bradley's high profile at its home base in Milwaukee, dealing with hotels under these circumstances hasn't been particularly daunting. "But its been a different story in other parts of the country," where short lead times have translated into higher room rates and demanding contract clauses, Severson said.

"In one property in Georgia, I was confronted with a room slippage clause that indicated penalties would be issued if the room block wasn't maintained exactly," he said. "The rooms had been booked so late-about a month before the meeting-that it seemed ridiculous."

Severson negotiated for his organization to be responsible for 50 percent of block loss. "It turned out not even to be an issue, but the point is that this hotel had these stringent clauses because this is just their baseline right now," he said.

Julienne Moss, meeting manager for the New Mexico Pharmaceutical Association, feels that she is getting squeezed out of her home state and that shorter lead times in the corporate environment are at least partly to blame. Despite having the time to shop around for her two annual meetings, Moss is feeling the pressure of her corporate counterparts' scheduling demands. She has traditionally held one of her annual meetings at the Holiday Inn Pyramid, which she describes as having been "very good" to the group, but she outgrew the space. Since then, she has yet to find an alternative.

"Hilton and Hyatt aren't interested in our business because they can always get corporate groups booked there who are willing to pay more than $100 per night," she said.

She also is witnessing demanding performance clauses and many extra charges. "One hotel quoted me a 19 percent setup fee even though the meeting space was 'free,' " she said.

Jackie Fox, who handles corporate sales for Morris Meetings and Incentives, a Salt Lake City agency affiliated with American Express, has spent the past year educating key clients on the need for longer lead times to gain some control of the negotiating process.

"I tell clients that if they want to achieve the discounts that I've promised them, they have to give me more time to work with," she said.

The real challenge though, is the ability to look into a crystal ball so that the precise size of a room block is revealed. "It used to be that a hotel would take your food and beverage into account and offer you a free meeting room," Fox said. "Now, F&B itself has attrition attached to it-if you're short even 10 meals, you'd better pull out your checkbook.