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“Pharmaceutical meetings were strong for us for the past
three years, especially traditional sales training meetings,”
said Andy Dolce, founder, chairman, and CEO, Dolce
International, Montvale, N.J. And there is more good news —
pressure on corporate budgets is easing — a little — and
that's a positive trend both for planners and for conference
centers. So said Dolce and three other industry executives who
discussed conference center trends with Medical
Meetings recently: Mike Fahner, vice president of
development, Aramark Harrison Lodging (AHL), Philadelphia;
Rory Loberg, president, AHL; and Jack Schmidt, chief marketing
officer, Benchmark Hospitality International, The Woodlands
(Houston).
When budgets were tighter, “corporations had to cut back on
executive training, so there's pent-up demand,” said Fahner.
“Companies are stressing training and personal development for
executives.” Loberg added, “Now, as companies go through
Sarbanes-Oxley, there's a need for retraining.”
At Benchmark, “We're seeing annual sales meetings come
back, and some larger meetings that were canceled are starting
to reappear, especially in resort destinations,” reported
Schmidt.
Booking cycles are lengthening — at least a bit. “Our
room-night bookings are 25 percent ahead of where they were at
this time last year,” said Schmidt. Fahner agreed. At Aramark
Harrison, “What was three months is now five to six months,”
he said. At Dolce conference centers in Europe, though,
“bookings are still very short-term,” said Dolce. “They lag
the U.S. by as much as six months to a year in terms of the
economy.”
Conference center executives remain committed to the
Complete Meeting Package, conference centers' all-inclusive
rate, convinced that it's best for everyone. “The
sophisticated planner understands the value of guaranteed
pricing, with no surprises,” said Loberg. “We'll unbundle if
someone wants an off-site meeting or dinner; we've always done
that. But we still prefer the CMP.”
Helping planners understand the CMP is critical, said
Schmidt. “Most planners are not full-time planners,” he said.
“We in the hospitality industry have trained them to buy in a
faulty manner. They buy on the room rate without ever seeing a
banquet menu or knowing what percentage of attendees will
drive or fly, and so on. We have to explain that they must
look at the total meeting cost, and that the hotel room is one
of the smallest costs.”
Dolce stressed education, too. “Our focus is on the new
customer who isn't used to the conference center concept,” he
said. “About 60 percent of our business is CMP, 10 percent is
group European Plan, and the balance is tour, leisure, and
industry business. We feel if we can get the group EP, we can
convert them to CMP.”
As conference centers work to educate planners, they face a
new challenge: procurement. “Procurement is a trend that's not
going away,” said Dolce. “They want to see apples to apples,
not apples to pears, so we'll continue to educate them so they
can see the value of the CMP. Fahner concurs: “The challenge
is to get procurement to understand that the CMP is not the
same as the room rate, that what we do is not a commodity
business.”
In Schmidt's view, “Corporate procurement departments are
really no different in many instances than third parties or
inexperienced meeting planners. We need to educate them. This
is one more thing we need to deal with — but there's always
one more thing.”
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