Premier Lands Key Corp. Buyers

<B> Premier Lands Key Corp. Buyers</B>

By Chris Davis

Just past the one-year anniversary of the Premier Group's acquisition by United Airlines, the meeting-management firm has secured commitments from several major corporations in its transformation from a primarily in-house unit to one that focuses on external business.

Premier Group, based in Rolling Meadows, Ill., has staged recent meetings for Ameritech and Galileo International--the new owners of Premier's former parent, Apollo Travel Services--and has commitments for future meetings for Hewlett-Packard and Sundstrand. Sun Microsystems has designated Premier as a preferred vendor.

Hewlett-Packard has used them for four or five meetings already and now is "in the process of bringing them on as a preferred supplier," said meetings program manager Rich Del Colle. "They're really after the large, high-end meetings where you need creativity and production abilities; they're looking for meetings with a minimum of 250 attendees. But they certainly have all the resources and commitment to do the jobs they take on."

While Hewlett-Packard uses one of its preferred travel agencies to handle air reservations, Premier handles the ground transportation. "It's a natural extension of our relationship with United," a Hewlett-Packard preferred supplier, Del Colle said.

"They came after us," said Terry Kenney, corporate travel manager for Sun Microsystems, which has designated Premier as a preferred vendor. "They have a good sales force and we're always looking for firms to handle large meetings."

Though Sun has no meetings yet scheduled with Premier, several firms do. Premier will plan and stage a meeting in Paris for Sundstrand in September and a November meeting for H-P in New Orleans, Premier Group president Randy Hannon said. Premier also has managed three meetings for Ameritech since July 1997 and was recently awarded the contract for the Galileo International conference in May in Honolulu.

"That's pretty good for a boutique company of 30 people," Hannon said. "We've had our share of successes and our share of not-so-successes. But we've got large firms who liked what they saw."

Premier was founded in 1992 as a unit dedicated to planning major meetings for Apollo, and became a wholly owned subsidiary of United in July 1997 as part of Galileo's acquisition of Apollo (<I>Meetings Today,</I> Sept. 15, 1997). With the change of owners, Premier's charge also was substantially altered. The planning firm, once focused primarily on Apollo and its conferences, was provided with the necessary financial resources and expected to sell itself to external firms.

"United has been very supportive in allowing our organization to grow and be successful on our own, without being watched over," Hannon said. "They've let us do what we think is necessary."

Premier hired a four-person sales staff--a general manager, two sales managers and an executive assistant--but Hannon said the key was convincing Premier's existing employees to consider their roles in a new light.

"Before, we were order takers, and now we had to sell ourselves," Hannon said. "It's a big challenge to turn that around. Now we have multiple projects, and we're part of a sales team."

Still, Del Colle said Premier would be wise not to exceed its capabilities.

"If I have one concern, it's that as their corporate business grows, sometimes they're going to have to say 'no' to folks," Del Colle said. "You don't want to stretch yourself too thin. Any meeting planning organization will hit that mark sooner or later.