Op-Ed: Proposed Meetings Restrictions Do More Harm Than Good

In the wake of the proposed legislation that would greatly reduce the capacity for federal Troubled Asset Relief Program funding recipients to freely plan travel and meetings, our industry is facing an unprecedented threat.

As a taxpayer, I fully support measures that prevent wasteful spending, but it seems as though our government is throwing the baby out with the bathwater by curbing these companies' capacity to conduct normal business.

Never before have companies had to go to such extreme measures to defend their meetings and events like TARP recipients have been pushed to do right now. Even non-TARP companies are scaling back their meetings in fear of a public backlash.

Some members of Congress have taken the entirely wrong approach and failed to fully consider the effects of their actions. Instead of yielding widespread meeting cancellations, their efforts should support business travel and all of the associated economic activity it drives.

Meetings and events have long been regarded as the final frontier of unmanaged corporate spend. In fact, in a recent survey, we at StarCite found that less than half of the companies we surveyed had established meetings policies in place. But now with meetings in the public eye, the inability of companies to wrap their arms around meetings and events expenses and report accurate data to executives and shareholders is no longer excusable.

It was great that the U.S. Travel Association recently recommended guidelines as a response to the impending government regulations. Their recommendations include a suggested measure that would ensure total annual expenses for meetings, events and incentive trips not exceed 15 percent of a company's total sales and marketing spend. Another suggested that at least 90 percent of incentive program attendees shall be other than senior executives.

However, if you are a company who does not have oversight and compliance measures in place for your meetings and events spend, then how can you track against these data-intensive guidelines? A best practice called strategic meetings management has been on the rise for the last few years, and now more than ever companies across the board are adopting its measures to not only institute and comply with new policies, but also save money.

The National Business Travel Association's groups & meetings committee defines strategic meetings management as "strategic management of enterprise-wide meeting related processes, spend, volumes, standards and suppliers to achieve quantitative cost savings, risk mitigation and superior service." In short, it is having the process to know what, when and where you are spending anything relating to meetings and the ability to safeguard against wasteful spending.

Measures that promote strategic meetings management for TARP recipients seem like the perfect solution. This would allow companies to continue valuable face-to-face meetings that are crucial to business operations, while at the same time giving the government and taxpayers peace of mind that there are processes in place to eliminate excessive and unnecessary spending. After all, the overarching goal of the government's intervention is to rehabilitate these companies and stimulate the economy. By causing the widespread cancellation of meetings, they are not only stalling these companies' economic growth, but potentially crippling the $244 billion business travel and meetings industry.

We can only hope that the members of Congress, the media and the public will listen to the concerns of our industry and back away from castigating every form of meetings spending. At the same time, our industry must redouble its efforts to increase spending oversight and compliance. This is the best long-term strategy for justifying and quantifying the value of meetings and events both today, when meetings are under fire, and tomorrow, when the economy recovers.