KPIs for travel to meetings

An article in today's Business Times quotes a recent global study conducted by CFO Research Services and American Expres (Amex), stating, "two thirds of respondents plan to keep in place or even bump up travel spending for existing clients, while 82 per cent of those polled will do the same for meetings with new clients or for business development". This is one of the several positive bits of news that has begun to appear in the media, pointing to a recovery of sorts for the meetings industry. Yahoo!!!

What caught my eye (in the same article) was a comment that some of the companies are now monitoring whether the time, money and effort spent on arranging and travelling to such meetings do result in revenue generation - sort of tracking to see if the event can be linked to new or additional business. Could this signal the emergence of stricter KPIs (key performance indicators) for evaluating meetings? I think this is important. It is heartening (as an industry practitioner) to see companies take meetings seriously. The success of a meeting should be measured in objective terms - this can only lead to a greater conviction in the benefits of holding face-to-face meetings. A lot of time, effort and dollars go into arranging and organising meetings. It is therefore only reasonable to want the meeting objectives to be not only met, but exceeded. Let's continue to cheer for the KPIs!!!

From double whammy to mini second whammy

Phew!!! There must be sighs of relief going round in waves. What was shaping up to be a potentially disastrous pandemic (the H1N1 virus) is now tapering down. I can just imagine meeting organisers around the whole getting ready to pop the champagne. Working hard to revive a somewhat lame meetings industry, the overlooming threat of a flu pandemic only added to the woes. Thankfully, the virus can be combatted by vaccines and most governments have been quick to activate control measures that have prevented the mass spread of the virus.

Meetings organisers will need to work quickly to shore up support from their stakeholders and push ahead with their planned events. They need to and the industry certainly needs to see such events being held. In fact, the various stakeholders in the industry - venue owners, hotels, event management agencies, audio-visual service suppliers, direct marketing agencies, DMCs, the exhibition stand contractors etc - need to band together and provide value-added support to organisers and meeting convenors......nudge them out of their shells and kick start some meetings activities.