During this past year of economic recession and attacks on the value of business-related travel, the symbiotic relationship that exists between associations and the cities that host their meetings, conventions and trade shows has only become clearer. Both association and convention bureau executives can find new ammunition to defend the value of business travel in a first-of-its-kind study released last month by the United States Travel Association and Destination & Travel Foundation. (Disclosure: I serve on the executive committee of the Destination & Travel Foundation.)

Titled “The Return on Investment of U.S. Business Travel,” the study was completed by Oxford Economics and found that for every dollar invested in business travel, businesses experience an average $12.50 in increased revenue and $3.80 in new profits. The study also concluded that reducing business travel has a negative impact on corporate profits: The average U.S. business would forfeit 15 percent of its profits in the first year of eliminating business travel.

The study covered 14 economic sectors and its findings were verified through a combination of three separate surveys of corporate executives and business travelers and a broad review of related research. For the purposes of the study, business travel included sales trips, meetings, conventions, trade shows and incentive trips. Other key findings of the study include:

• Business executives estimated a four- to six-time return on every dollar invested in conference and trade show participation.
• Business executives and business travelers estimated that 28 percent of their current business would be lost without in-person meetings.
• Business executives and business travelers estimated that roughly 40 percent of their prospective customers are converted to new customers through in-person meetings compared with only 16 percent without such meetings.
• More than half of business travelers stated that as many as 20 percent of their company’s new customers were the direct result of trade-show participation.
• Eighty-five percent of corporate executives perceive web meetings and teleconferences to be less effective than in-person meetings with prospective customers, and 63 percent believe virtual meetings are less effective with current customers.

According to the study, U.S. business travel is responsible for $246 billion in spending and 2.3 million American jobs; $100 billion of this spending and nearly 1 million American jobs are linked directly to meetings and events. In the first six months of 2009, total business travel spending was down 11.9 percent. The study estimated that a 10 percent increase in business travel spending would increase the Gross Domestic Product of the U.S. by between 1.5 and 2.8 percent.

There is no question that business-related travel is critical to the economic well-being of the United States and encouraging your members to travel more may well be the best “stimulus package” for getting the economy back on track. For the complete version of the study and a tool kit with suggestions for using its findings, please visit the U.S. Travel Association website at ustravel.org.

Tim Schneider
Schneider Publishing Company

The conventions and trade shows organized by trade associations and professional societies are typically an important source of revenue for those organizations. With the economic recession and the downturn in
corporate travel, the need for associations to make a better case for the importance of their conventions and trade shows has never been more urgent. Thanks to new research from Tradeshow Week magazine, association executives have several additional data points to help them get that point across.

Tradeshow Week magazine surveyed a total of 323 executives and managers, which included a cross-section of respondents in a range of industry sectors. The survey found that 96 percent of CEOs and other senior executives said they are attending their industry’s most important events this year despite—or perhaps because of—current business conditions. A series of questions on the value of events received highly positive responses, including:

• A significant 89 percent of the survey respondents said they are going to the most important events in their industry.
• Eighty-seven percent agreed that conventions and tradeshows are essential for comparing products and meeting suppliers in person.
• Fifty-four percent said that smaller crowds at events this year have enabled them to be more efficient when at the show.
• Fifty percent of attendees said that missing key events may negatively impact their future personal or organizational performance.

Although travel budgets are under scrutiny in nearly every industry, 59 percent of the respondents to the Tradeshow Week survey believe their travel budgets will rebound within a year after seeing an economic or sales turnaround, and 42 percent say their travel budgets will rebound even quicker—within six months—of a turnaround in the economy.

Even with tighter exhibitor budgets, 84 percent of the respondents say they will participate in more or the same number of conventions and trade shows over the next two years. A whopping 88 percent of respondents said that conventions and trade shows will continue to be a critical part of their product sourcing and buying process over the next five years.

According to Tradeshow Week, the findings indicate that in a challenging economy it is even more important to keep up-to-date with industry trends, see new products and services, and maintain and build relationships—all areas in which association conventions and trade shows provide significant value and efficiency. In short, attending conventions and tradeshows during a recession keeps executives informed and competitive.

A detailed report on the findings of this survey along with a 40-slide PowerPoint file that your association can use to help support your convention and trade show marketing efforts is available from Tradeshow Week for $149. For more information or to order, contact Michael Hughes at (480) 483-4461.

Tim Schneider
Schneider Publishing Company

As we have reported many times in this space, convention bureaus face a never-ending task of educating their communities and their funding sources on the value of the work they do. Historically, that education has centered on providing statistics relating to how many visitors the destination marketing organization (DMO) has helped attract. At the just-concluded annual meeting of the Destination Marketing Association International in Atlanta, a new approach to measuring the value of the visitor industry was suggested thanks to research compiled by the Greater Phoenix Convention & Visitors Bureau. The research, released through the Destination & Travel Foundation (the 501(c)(3) affiliate of DMAI and on whose board I serve), gives DMOs another way of proving the importance of keeping conventions and meetings coming to their cities.

Rather than taking the traditional approach of focusing solely on the amount of money contributed to public coffers through hotel occupancy taxes, the Greater Phoenix CVB embarked on a survey of its hotel properties to determine how much each of them pays in property tax and sales tax above and beyond hotel occupancy taxes. What the bureau discovered is that hotel occupancy taxes represent less than half of the total tax contributions its hotels make to city, county and state governments. Surprisingly, the $115 million the 38 hotels included in the survey paid in property and sales taxes in 2008 equates to an astounding $10,123 in tax revenue per hotel guest room annually. If that number does not sensitize political leaders to the importance of travel, I don’t know what will.

“For too long, we have focused and been evaluated by government on just hotel occupancy taxes when in fact it is only half of our impact,” said Steve Moore, president and CEO of the Greater Phoenix CVB. “Keep in mind this also does not identify what hotel employees and vendors spend in one’s local economy nor what the hotel guests spent outside the hotel.” In comparing the taxes paid by hotel owners to the taxes paid by other local businesses and homeowners, Moore also makes the point that visitors don’t tend to use many of the things those taxes pay for, such as schools, libraries, prisons and police and fire departments. “Visitors keep our own taxes lower and we need to make that clearer to our policy makers,” said Moore.

Detailed results from the Phoenix CVB’s study are being provided by the Destination & Travel Foundation as part of the foundation’s Destination Excellence campaign, which Moore chairs. As I noted in our March issue, the campaign set a goal of raising $4 million during this very difficult time for the travel industry. As of the meeting in Atlanta, more than $3.5 million has been pledged by supporters of the Destination Excellence campaign. For more information on the Phoenix study and the Destination Excellence campaign, please call Camille Johnson at DMAI at (202) 835-4088.

Regardless of the goals and objectives of your association, reevaluating the way you make your case has the potential to shift the way in which your key constituencies view the value of your organization.

Tim Schneider
Schneider Publishing Company

As a member of the executive committee of the Destination & Travel Foundation (the 501(c)(3) affiliate of the Destination Marketing Association International, which is holding its annual meeting this week in Atlanta), it’s been my pleasure to observe up closethe management styles and skill sets of several of the industry’s leading destination marketing executives. Since the vast majority of DMOs receive public funding from hotel occupancy tax revenue and nearly a third of them receive some form of state tax dollars, the DMO CEO not only has to manage a paid staff and volunteer board, but also has to manage key funding relationships with the mayor, city council, city manager or state-level funding source. As a result, DMO execs are thrown into a political role by virtue of their reliance on funds controlled by these governmental entities.

What makes all this even harder is that in the case of hotel occupancy taxes, for example, funds that were originally intended to be primarily reinvested in marketing to stimulate additional visitation are increasingly being diverted for uses other than destination marketing. Because it falls to the DMO executive to be the chief advocate for travel in his or her community, the DMO CEO can, on occasion, end up at odds with the destination’s political leaders. While every savvy DMO executive knows the importance of building support for the DMO among those in political leadership positions, the best laid plans of nonpartisan political education are often not enough to make DMO funding sacrosanct.

For more information on the important role of the destination marketing industry, click here to access the digital version of “Why Meetings Matter,” which we recently published in conjunction with DMAI.

Tim Schneider
Schneider Publishing Company

Several hospitality industry leaders we interviewed recently regarding the state of the travel industry agreed that association meetings and sports-related travel are two of the few bright spots on the travel-industry horizon. The roundtable session featured Loews Hotels Chairman & CEO Jonathan Tisch; Roger Dow, president & CEO of the U.S. Travel Association; Michael Gehrisch, president & CEO of Destination Marketing Association International; J. Stephen Perry, president & CEO of the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention & Visitors Bureau; and Maura Allen Gast, Executive Director of the Irving (Texas) Convention & Visitors Bureau.

The comments of our roundtable participants echo those of many people in the travel industry that we have spoken with during the past six months. In times like these, destinations and hotels need to target the markets that are most likely to produce business for them and two of the best markets to be targeting right now are association meetings and sports-related travel.

The complete roundtable discussion will appear in the July issues of SportsTravel and Association News magazines as part of a special section produced in conjunction with Destination Marketing Association International titled Why Meetings Matter. To request a copy of this special section, please e-mail me.

Tim Schneider
Schneider Publishing Company

President Obama recently announced an ambitious plan for a new system of high-speed rail service that would run on 10 corridors across the United States, connecting many population centers. The planned routes would have the potential to change the way large numbers of people travel, much like the construction of the interstate highway system did a half-century ago. High-speed rail is defined as a rail line that reaches at least 90 miles per hour. There is currently only one such line operating in the U.S., Amtrak’s Acela Express, which runs between Boston and Washington.

For state and regional association executives and sports-event organizers concerned about the ease with which people can travel to meetings and events and for destinations that have suffered reductions in air service, high-speed rail may be a godsend. For more information on the proposed high-speed rail routes, visit www.fra.dot.gov.

A final reminder: The July issue of Association News and SportsTravel will include a special section titled Why Meetings Matter: Everybody Wins When Groups Travel. Produced in conjunction with Destination Marketing Association International, this special section will be distributed at numerous industry events during the coming year. For more information or to advertise in this special section, please e-mail me or call us toll-free at (877) 577-3700.

Tim Schneider
Schneider Publishing Company

The July issues of both Association News and SportsTravel magazine will include our annual special section produced in conjunction with the Destination Marketing Association International. This year’s special section will be titled “Why Meetings Matter: Everybody Wins When Groups Travel.”

This special section will include:
• The importance of face-to-face meetings at a time when the convention industry is under siege
• Successfully combating the diversion of hotel occupancy taxes to general fund purposes
• An exclusive Q & A with industry leaders on the future of the travel industry

The meeting and event planners who will receive “Why Meetings Matter” generate 106 million hotel room nights annually. In addition, this special section will be distributed at industry events throughout the coming year. Extra copies will also be made available for anyone who wishes to use it for their own industry advocacy efforts. For more information on this once-a-year opportunity to reach both the state and regional association meetings market and the sports-related travel market with a single advertising buy, please call us toll-free at (877) 577-3700 or send me an e-mail today.

Last week, I had the pleasure of serving as the keynoter at the annual “Partners in Tourism” dinner organized by the Yosemite Sierra Visitors Bureau in Oakhurst, California. The dinner brought together all of the stakeholders in the travel and tourism industry in Madera County and I enjoyed making the case for why all of us need to be working together to help promote the value that meetings and group travel bring to destinations large and small.

Spreading the message of the importance of meetings has never been more important given the recent torrent of critical coverage of corporate meetings and events. I am pleased, therefore, to announce that the July issues of both Association News and SportsTravel magazines will include a special section titled “Why Meetings Matter: Everybody Wins When Groups Travel.” Produced in conjunction with the Destination Marketing Association International, this special section will include an exclusive roundtable discussion with travel-industry leaders as well as tools for meeting planners to use to help substantiate the return-on-investment of face-to-face meetings.

For more information on this once-a-year opportunity to reach both the state and regional association meetings market and the sports-related travel market with a single advertising buy, please call us toll-free (877) 577-3700 or send me an e-mail today.

Tim Schneider
Schneider Publishing Company

We’re always touting the power of association meetings and sports-related travel and last week I had the opportunity to experience that strength first-hand. As a presenter at the annual meeting of Running USA, I was pleasantly surprised to not only find an association meeting where the attendance was not off at all from last year but also to discover that many of the race directors in attendance are actually planning to either expand their current events or launch new events in the coming year. Attending the meeting was much like entering a parallel dimension where economic gloom and doom was not the order of the day.

While no sector of the economy has escaped the effects of the current economic downturn, we are grateful that the state-and-regional association meetings market and the sports-related travel market are—relative to other group travel markets—weathering this economic storm. Destinations, hotels and other travel providers looking for sources of group business during this challenging time should consider anew these two markets. For more information, please call us toll-free at (877) 577-3700 or feel free to leave your comments below.

Tim Schneider
Schneider Publishing Company

The buzz in the corridors at the annual meeting of the Professional Convention Management Association last month in New Orleans was all about the economy. Many of the hotel marketing and convention bureau executives I spoke with indicated genuine concern about the short- and long-term prospects for group business. Several have seen double-digit decreases in bookings and attendance numbers for corporate meetings and incentive groups. As a result, many hotel and destination marketers are confronting either the possibility or reality of seeing their own budgets reduced.

Against this tumultuous backdrop, if you ask a convention bureau or hotel marketing executive which markets are holding up strongest, the answer usually includes association meetings, particularly the meetings of state and regional associations. Relative to the other group-travel markets, the 59 million hotel room nights generated by state and regional associations have become even more important in today’s volatile environment. That’s because in times of turmoil, the meetings of state and regional associations are more heavily relied upon by members who look to their associations for information that will help them survive and prosper despite the challenging times.

Just as the importance of state and regional association meetings has grown, so too has our commitment to serving this community. We are pleased to announce two new offerings designed to increase the level of service we provide to association executives nationwide: the relaunch of AssociationNews.com and the launch of a digital version of Association News magazine.

The Web site has been given a completely new appearance that reflects the design sensibilities of our printed magazine while also providing interactive elements to enliven your Association News experience. For example, our online Site Selector makes finding in-depth information on destinations and meeting venues as easy as clicking your mouse. We’ve also created an online Resource Directory that serves as a complement to our printed directories as well as an online version of our popular People & Places department. Finally, our Web site’s new search feature makes it easier for you to locate the industry intelligence you need to be more successful.

Concurrent with the redesign of our Web site, we’ve also launched a digital edition of Association News. The digital edition allows us to expand the reach of Association News to include more association readers than are served by any other meetings publication. To subscribe, please visit AssociationNews.com.

All of these changes and enhancements reflect our continued belief in the importance of state and regional associations. While we encourage our readers to make use of the new Web site and digital edition, we also encourage convention bureaus, hotels, hotel chains and others that benefit from the meetings activity of associations to consider increasing their support of the state and regional association community. In these challenging times, investing in one of the few markets that continues to provide solid returns can be just the economic fix you’re looking for!

Tim Schneider
Schneider Publishing Company