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COVER
STORY - February
2001 by Adam Bruns Sidebar- When you examine the parallel industries of community economic development and the meetings and conventions business, it’s no wonder they seem joined at the hip. Only while one seeks to entice companies to come and stay, the other wants them to come visit, go away, then come back again. In fact, the meetings and conventions industry could be imagined as one huge, amoeba-like economic development engine, seeping into different communities in a nonstop drive to both enjoy the best a place has to offer and to leave its mark in the form of spinoff spending by participants. Take a recent Meeting Professionals International conference itself for instance. The organization’s North American professional education conference, held in late January in New Orleans, was projected to bring in 2,800 members, and have an immediate economic impact of $7.2 million, while also sparking another $125 million in meeting and convention business in the Crescent City in the coming five years. MPI members account for over 700,500 meetings a year around the world, and spend around $8.5 billion on them.
Griffin has a soft spot in his heart for Kentucky, having served as executive director of the Kentucky League of Cities from 1980 to 1990. He says the importance of access can’t be overstated. “Some of the basic rationale that a meeting planner must consider is called ‘lift,’” he explains. “How can you get there, how easy is it, and how expensive is it? Arrival is an important aspect.” He notes the potentially dramatic impact of city-county merger in Louisville on both the city’s and the state’s reputation in his field. “The merger of Jefferson County and Louisville is the wisest thing they could possibly do,” he observes. From first-hand experience, Griffin knows what a watershed moment the Greater Louisville community has reached. “They have struggled so long and so hard trying to figure out how to work together,” he observes. “I think selecting a metro mayor will create some positive synergy that has probably heretofore been absent. It will allow the citizenry as well as the business interests to come together and forge new relationships and partnerships – it will really put them on the map.” Some synergy has already been taking place, and the $72 million Kentucky International Convention Center has opened to rave reviews. The city will play host to the huge FFA convention through 2005, and that organization has noticed dramatic improvements in service, capacity and capabilities in just two years. The annual convention brings $22 million in economic impact to the area, along with 46,000 visitors that tour areas in a large radius from Louisville. Meanwhile, Mayor Dave Armstrong and other business leaders tout the need for a major convention hotel downtown. Northern Kentucky, with its top-ranked airport and Cincinnati next door, is still booming with new meetings business. “The combination of the Covington-Newport area, especially with the airport, makes it particularly attractive,” says Griffin. “They have a new convention center there too. And Cincinnati on the other side of river gives you social, non-convention activities you can build into a program. Northern Kentucky is an up-and-coming area, and they should probably perceive Cincy as their partner instead of competitor in terms of attracting conventions to the area.”
Lexington could be considered a mecca for meeting professionals, serving as home to such highly regarded organizations as Host Communications (and its association management business) and Wyncom, which is among the leading seminar companies. The Kentucky Bluegrass Chapter of Meeting Professionals International was selected as 1999 MPI Chapter of the Year for chapters under 250 members. The group was cited for growing its monthly meeting attendance by 25 percent, among other accomplishments. The most recent evidence of resident expertise is the start-up last year of Small Market Meetings, a national monthly trade publication founded by Mac Lacy and Herb Sparrow of Pioneer Publishing, which also puts out Group Travel Leader, a publication oriented toward the coach tour industry. “Looking at the large meeting publications, if there was a segment that was overlooked, it was the smaller cities and locales,” says Lacy. “Our basic guideline is 500 delegates or fewer, sometimes far fewer.” According to an MPI Meeting Outlook Survey of 450 meeting planners, the typical planner organizes an average of 9.6 meetings per year with 50 or fewer attendees, and usually has six months to do it. Kentucky is made up of small meeting destinations, Lacy points out. Like manufacturing plants and distribution facilities on the industrial side, so-called “second-tier” communities are fast becoming hot spots for smaller meetings. “That’s very true,” agrees Lacy. “There’s a dynamic we deal with all the time in tourism – they want to go where they haven’t been before. Air service is a huge factor. But if they can get to Lexington, then on to Shaker Village, or Louisville and then on to Bardstown – that makes a lot of sense.” State parks are an increasingly popular choice, and Kentucky has some of the nation’s best. Restaurants, country clubs and colleges are popular sites as well (witness Georgetown College’s growing meetings business). Historic sites have also become major draws for meetings, valued more for their atmosphere than their technology. Shaker Village outside Harrodsburg, ideal for retreats or long-range planning sessions, was the only other Kentucky lodging establishment besides the Camberley and Seelbach in Louisville to garner recognition in Zagat Survey’s “2001 Top U.S. Hotels, Resorts and Spas Guide.” One
local practitioner of the meeting planner’s art is
Ann Kelly, meetings coordinator for the American
Association of Equine Professionals. Just off the heels
of the organization’s annual convention (5,500
attendees) in San Antonio in December, she attended the
national convention of the Professional Convention
Management Association, and had her eyes opened further
to the breadth of the industry. As someone who coordinates gatherings across the country, how does she assess the physical facilities and human flexibilities of Kentucky? “Excellent,” says Kelly. “We had our annual convention here in Lexington in 1995, and the city itself got rave reviews – the equine opportunities of course are unparalleled. But the association has grown, and it’s just too large for a city this size.” However, true to Mac Lacy’s vision, AAEP holds regular smaller meetings locally, including a veterinary practice management seminar at the Marriott Griffin Gate Resort, as well as smaller board and educational meetings at the association’s expanded in-house facilities at the Kentucky Horse Park. Kelly observes that there’s a lot more to comprehensive meeting planning than most of us think. “One thing most people don’t realize is the legal awareness that is necessary for effective meeting planning, even up through contracts law,” she explains. “One of the sessions I attended last week was called ‘The Realities of Legalities,’ where an attorney recommended to be aware of what your liabilities are, and if you needed additional insurance. That was a real eye-opener for me. And I’m sure some associations are just oblivious to that liability.” While legal, technological and other functional capabilities of sites are always important, it may be the “soft” or human factors that make or break a community’s or a firm’s viability as a meeting host. “If your community is aggressively hospitable, it’s the greatest welcome mat in the world,” says Ed Griffin. “They’re glad you’re there, and glad when you come back. That’s not built into every community that tries to be a mecca for conventions.” A shortage of union problems in Kentucky doesn’t hurt either, he adds. Not to mention a shortage of high prices … or bad experiences. “A bad experience in the meetings industry is a negative ad that you just can’t afford,” he says. “‘Y’all come’ won’t overcome one bad phone call. If people are rude, it’s tough for a city to recover, but I don’t think cities in Kentucky have that problem.” Griffin points out how the market for meetings has increasing opportunities at the international level as well, a realm Kentuckians are comfortable in when it comes to economic development. And like those efforts, he adds, “it really does take a partnership of cities and state government to collaborate on media buys and trade show representation in order to be successful.” There’s also a need for an experienced sales team, familiar with a particular country’s culture, mores and business protocol. The dynamic is the same one Lacy describes in the small meetings niche: novelty. “There’s
a huge marketplace in international meetings, because
everybody is looking for a new place to go,” says
Griffin. “Figure out what’s unique. The
convention and visitors bureaus in Louisville, Lexington
and Northern Kentucky need to make sure there’s
always something new and different on the menu.” Adam
Bruns is associate editor of The Lane Report. |
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Copyright 1996-2001, by Kentucky Business Online, LLC. All rights reserved. Editorial
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“New Orleans is
a spectacular venue for our convention because it
personifies the essence of southern charm and hospitality
while offering new facilities and a commitment to the
meeting industry,” says MPI president and CEO Ed
Griffin.
Meanwhile, the $45
million expansion of Lexington Center’s capabilities
will get started in May. The project calls for a
19,000-s.f. ballroom, 12,000-f.t. of meeting rooms, and
30,000-s.f. of open lobby space. Over $5 billion is
forecast to be spent in convention space expansion in the
U.S. over the next three years.