What can Strategic Meetings Management Programmes learn from TripAdviser and the coffee drinkers of Totnes in Devon?

So, what is a Strategic Meetings Management Programme (SMMP), why is it important and how are they changing the way large organisations plan, measure and control their meetings?

In truth the principles of SMMP have been around for some time but only in the past few years has the process been articulated and benefits more widely understood.  A great place to start if you want to understand SMMP is the recent HBAA white paper, available at http://bit.ly/VHtwpb

The HBAA report (for obvious reasons) focuses largely on the contribution of specialist meetings management agencies and procurement professionals.  However, at the risk of upsetting these important and influential vested interests, I want to establish that any successful strategy must serve the interests of the meeting ‘owner’ and their audience not the intermediaries, their job is to facilitate the process and add value.

There is an absolute requirement for good practise but the tendency toward mediocrity that an inflexible, commoditised process, designed to make life easier for the agents and accountants must be resisted.

So, what can meetings profession learn from TripAdviser and the Totnes Story?

You may have seen recently that the coffee drinkers of Totnes successfully appealed to mega brand Costa Coffee to stay out of town in defence of their independent local coffee shops. Whilst I am not suggesting that the independent venue sector needs protection I do think that a debate needs to be had about how best to serve meeting planners when developing processes such as SMMP.

The job of procurement is to save cost and the job of agents is to book the best venues but both of these roles should remain subordinate to the needs of the meeting planner.  If this were indeed the current situation how can it be that SMMP ‘preferred supplier’ lists are dominated by the major hotel brands and based on special commissions, volume incentives and availability of automated booking processes?

This may sound like sour grapes from the CEO of an independent venue group but I offer in evidence the proof that independent venues consistently score higher than the big brands in the approval ratings of event hosts.

The only independent, benchmarked, national event feedback system (which compares 20 meeting venue categories and brands and has collected many thousands of client reports) consistently scores the big brands significantly lower for ‘Net Promoter’, Overall Satisfaction and Value for Money. In spite of this clear preference, strategic meetings management programs and the large agency policies and processes push ever increasing volumes of corporate meetings to the big brands.

It’s time that these programmes take user feedback on board if they are going to deliver the best results for their meetings.  Agents and procurement professionals need to realise that they are driving commoditisation, mediocrity and supplier consolidation.  To maintain healthy competition and improvement in quality they have a responsibility to support variety.  Consolidation of suppliers will work against them in the future. Without realising it, the agents are facilitating their own demise, if they cannot add value to their clients by their specialist knowledge of niche providers because they have killed them off they will soon be bypassed - hotel big brands will be only too pleased to deal direct with corporate procurement.

Meeting planners need to learn from the coffee drinkers of Totnes and take back the control of venue selection but they also need to have access to the data about venue performance, maybe it’s time for a meetings equivalent of TripAdviser?

Its interesting to see what affect TripAdviser has had on the individual traveller market and the choices those buyers have.

If you go to the hotel feedback site and look at the rankings for any town or city it soon becomes obvious that people prefer the service and value for money they get from independent and boutique hotels.  Good independent and boutique hotels are thriving.  This is now driving the big brands to launch small scale brands that try to emulate the personality of their successful competitors.  Choice is undoubtedly increasing.

The industry needs to launch SMMP 2.0 and close the feedback loop to drive quality and preserve variety and choice.  The Agent and Procurement processes need to answer to the consumer and reward the best suppliers.

A Rose By Any Other Name

Internationally, a conference is widely regarded as a small to medium sized meeting, whilst the terms convention and congress are reserved for events attended by larger numbers of people; confirmed by a search of ‘conference’ in APEX (Accepted Practices Exchange) Glossary from the Convention Industry Council.

Sundial Group has long been involved in the International Association of Conference Centres which represents venues around the world that provide a dedicated environment for small to medium sized meetings. Indeed I have been honoured to hold the post of Global President and in that role built relationships with members from both English speaking and non-English speaking nations. Ironically it is the ‘mother country’ which has the greatest confusion over the use of the words ‘conference’ and ‘conference centre’.

Unfortunately the wider population in the UK tend to use the term ‘conference’ to cover the whole range of meetings. Indeed, we are currently in the ‘conference season’ according to the news channels with the political great and good and their lobbying organisations swanning off to out of season seaside towns. Interestingly the only organisation to use the correct terminology is the TUC which recently held their ‘congress’ in Brighton.

So why does this really matter?

Conference Centres are a specialist and dedicated niche provider which enjoy a loyal following from meeting planners in the know. Unfortunately many people charged with booking a meeting venue are not so well informed and so, like the rest of us in 2012, type terms that spring to mind into their search engine in the hope of finding what they are looking for. Recent research has found that internet search engines are the most popular venue selection process used after personal experience.

Although no doubt technology will find a solution in due course, the 2012 internet is not good with semantic confusion. If you don’t know what a conference centre is when you look for it you probably won’t find it. If you want a dedicated venue for an important small meeting but the first thing that springs to mind when you hear conference centre is the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in Westminster (Capacity 2,500) you will probably type something like ‘meeting hotel’ or ‘meeting venue’. These names cover a far wider spectrum of spaces available for meetings and, given the massive SEO and digital marketing budgets of the major hotel brands are unlikely to render a first page listing of the best (in my view) environment for a meeting.

I think we need to start a campaign for the correct use of the word conference. Let’s get the news channels to rename the autumn party political meeting period the ‘convention season’, or, slightly less mid-Atlantic, the ‘congress season’. Come on QE II fess up and rename yourselves a congress centre.

An Event To Make Us Proud

At the risk of contributing more to a surplus of London 2012 content I have an overwhelming desire to record my views as we approach the end of what looks like an historic benchmark in global events.  I was lucky in the first ticket draw, way back in 2011 and in the past few days witnessed the boxing and athletics.  What I hadn’t expected was the quality of organisation and incredible atmosphere.

LOCOG has staged an event to make everyone in the UK meetings industry proud.  To compliment what, in my experience, was faultless organisation and logistics has been an atmosphere of hospitality and welcome that might have seemed out of character for London.

There were almost too many positive angles which, taken as a whole, created this once in a lifetime experience.  The stunning setting and structures of the park (witness the flower meadow in my family photo), the fabulous success of our athletes and the magnificent coverage by the BBC all played major parts. However, the masterstroke was the recruitment of a massive army of volunteers who set an infectiously happy and relaxed tone to the proceedings.

The fact that someone took responsibility for creating this hospitality demonstrates how much smart thought went into the planning.

This confirmed once again that successful events are not just about facilities and content, a host must also take responsibility for creating the atmosphere to complete the experience. 

The single most important factor?

The sun has finally got his hat on, hurrah!  Its wonderful to see our guests at the three Sundial Venues opening windows and doors and taking advantage of the wonderful setting, enjoying the fresh air, sunshine and outdoor spaces.  Seeing people energised like this put me in mind of one of my favourite LinkedIn groups, The Brain Friendly Learning Group, which recently carried an excellent discussion with the title 'The one most important thing about physical learning environment?'. I was fascinated that in these days of presentation technology and connectivity the consensus focussed on natural light and access to the outdoors. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

Stella Collins posted a link to a Neuroscience News article, Let there be light: it's good for our brains, well worth a read.The fact seems to be that there is no substitute for the quality and intensity of natural daylight.  Caroline Lewis added that having to work in a basement was just too depressing and Delia Fletcher is certainly one for the outdoors, encouraging the breaks at her events to hit the exit.

Obviously we don't have a monopoly on meeting spaces with plenty of natural light and easy access to relaxed outdoor space.  However, I will certainly be reminding our teams to highlight the benefits when in discussion with event planners who might also be considering urban venues or letting themselves get pushed into inappropriate spaces such as basements or other rooms without windows.

Meetings Technology to replace Face to Face?

Several publications including Events, Our Industry, Meetings & Incentive Travel and Conference News have covered a recent piece by Zibrant's Fay Sharpe on the 'rocketing use of meetings technology'.

It might be easy to read her claims that ‘up to 20% of ‘ritual’ face to face meetings will be replaced by virtual meetings’ and feel deeply concerned for the events and meetings sector.

However, I believe that trying to attribute specific outcomes to the rapid march of technology is a risky pastime. The combination of mind-blowing advances in technology and financial austerity will indeed cause fundamental changes in the way people work, communicate, share and create knowledge, but not necessarily with the most obvious outcomes.

The broader technology driven picture is that organisational structures are being re-invented. Teams are replacing hierarchies; projects are replacing routine administration and access to data is ubiquitous.

Sundial Group has hosted ‘management training’ for almost 50 years but I have been amazed at how rapidly this is changing. Corporate learning and development was dominated by ‘chalk and talk’. The information age with its immediate access to the world’s data has made most of this classroom learning redundant. This could have spelt the end of management centres but it hasn’t, there have never been so many dedicated venues!

Nowadays corporate development is all about the creation rather than learning of knowledge. Communication is the lifeblood of this way of working. Traditional teaching has been replaced by skills development, team working, creativity and experiential learning.

Strangely one of civilizations oldest events, due to take place this summer in London is helping to accelerate another organisational change. The anticipated disruption to commuters is driving the already established trend of remote working. Some of the most traditional industries and professions have realised that the day has arrived when they don’t need everyone in the office every day. Leading consultancies such as Corpra are developing and testing strategies for this summer that will drive irreversible change.

So what might be the bigger picture for venues and the future for face to face meetings? I believe that organisations will move away from the day to day office based environment but instead will look to bring people together as and when there is a need. They won’t want to maintain expensive HQ buildings capable of housing all office staff at once but they will want to use the most conducive environment, tailor-made for a project to be launched, reviewed or shared and for team face time to accelerate innovation and create knowledge.

Technology is indeed changing how we work but I firmly believe that the human need for physical proximity as an adjunct to the communication experience will be with us for a long time. There may indeed be growth in remote meetings but at Sundial we are focused on how the future will drive a need for the best face to face meeting environment because we believe the need has never been greater.”

The evolution of dedicated venues

The ongoing economic crisis of the past 4 years has driven the most rapid business evolution ever seen. Never before has it been so critical for organisations to embrace change. The challenge is to understand what to change and why.

Speaking as a past Global President of The International Association of Conference Centres (IACC) I have been especially interested to see how our particular niche of the conference centre concept would evolve. IACC members operate in the small to medium sized meetings market (outside the UK larger conference centres are called convention centres). Their bread and butter events are about strategy and communication, management training and in-house conferences, product launches, and motivational get togethers.

It is a long-held belief of the niche providers to this sector (and many of their clients) that a dedicated and focused environment is a better fit for these activities than a hotel or other location that regard meetings business as ancillary.

So how do you test this difference? Hotels focus on selling bedrooms, they regard meetings as a great way to sell a block of bedrooms and have developed meetings facilities and services to enhance their ability to sell bedrooms. The core business of Conference Centres, however, is selling meetings. Their management approach is driven by the needs of the meeting planner. Facilities, operations, staffing and training respond to their understanding of how to add value to meetings.

An interesting industry debate developed exactly along these lines as the availability of broadband connectivity and WiFi became key requirements for meeting attendees. The traditional hotel approach was to identify this need as a revenue opportunity whilst conference centres had no hesitation to install the necessary infrastructure and provide the resource at no charge. In the current highly competitive, over supplied marketplace Hoteliers have had to back down, but I don’t believe this has changed their underlying attitude.

On the other hand, a consequence of more choice for customers has also resulted in conference centre management having to sit up and take notice of the generally superior individual guest facilities encountered at good hotels.

At a superficial level it may seem that the once clear blue water that existed between conference centres and hotels has narrowed or even disappeared. Yes conference centres have upped their game with investment in accommodation and amenities and hotels have listened to their meetings clients’ bug-bears about charging extra for key ingredients.

It has indeed become much more difficult to tell at first glance if a venue is a hotel or a conference centre, even the name over the door might be misleading. Hotels have sectioned off some of their space and labelled it Conference Centre, whilst some traditional conference centres have earned themselves the chance to rebrand as conference hotels, where they are offering dedicated meeting space with high quality accommodation.

To add to this confusion some operators who traditionally ran dedicated meeting venues have lost sight of their priorities and re-organised with a drive to sell bedrooms (even offering loss-leading single overnight specials to the detriment to their focussed environment) whilst hotel brands have taken their meeting planners more seriously and changed their priorities for operations, facilities, staffing and training in response.

However I would argue that ultimately, under the surface of any venue my definition of the dedicated meeting environment differentiator still remains. Does your chosen venue sell meetings or bedrooms?

Fortunately other recent developments make it easier to ask that question and get a truthful answer. Our increasingly connected and transparent world is giving rise of the ‘Thank You Economy’ and is re-establishing the power of recommendation, washing away the principle of blind brand loyalty.

I believe that it is only a matter of time before hotel booking agents and corporate procurement controllers tap into the knowledge that is out there and join the experienced meeting planners who have always been more influenced by the environment and outcomes than the venue / hotel marketing spiel.

At a time when buyers have the upper hand in the supply / demand relationship the dedicated venues have a distinct advantage. They work at understanding how they add value and seek to control the overall environment they provide so that the focus is on the needs of the organisation hosting the meeting.

If you have read the recent Steve Jobs biography you may, like me, see an analogy here with Apple Corporations’ desire to take responsibility for the overall, end to end customer experience. You might even find dedicated venues with Apples’ drive to make that experience the best it can be – if you ask the right questions.