Tech, Travel, and Twang!
Come for the thoughts, stay for the tea. The co-founders of Destination Innovate, Jennifer Barbee and Kristen Cruz brew up the latest industry tea every Tuesday - diving into simmering issues, hot trends, and special guests. Grab a cup and let’s spill the tea!
Tech, Travel, and Twang!
Meetings on the Rise: Navigating Demand and Innovation in Event Planning
Discover how the meetings industry is not only rebounding but thriving, as chat about Kristen's experience at the Texas Travel Alliance's 39th Annual Texas Travel Summit. Together, we uncover the stunning resurgence of the industry, which is now surpassing pre-pandemic levels. Kristen shares insights on the new frontrunners in event planning, with the sports market leading the charge, while planners face the dual challenge of high demand and limited venue availability. We also dissect the role of hotels and DMOs in overcoming rising costs and the importance of flexible, responsive partnerships that help planners navigate these turbulent times. Even amidst these challenges, there’s a palpable optimism breezing through the industry, with the majority of planners feeling more positive than they did just months ago.
As the meetings landscape transforms, DMOs are shifting their strategies from traditional FAM tours to more personalized site visits, all while wrestling with tighter budgets and a greater emphasis on digital marketing. This episode highlights the creative ways DMOs are capitalizing on local partnerships to offer competitive incentives, turning financial constraints into opportunities. We also delve into the evolving dynamics between planners, hotels, and DMOs, emphasizing the significance of flexibility and post-event feedback. Learn how collaboration can create opportunities even in a landscape marked by rising costs and rigid contract terms, as the industry adjusts back to pre-pandemic norms. Join us for these insights and prepare for upcoming episodes where we'll explore emerging traveler behaviors and market trends.
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The Tech, Travel, and Twang Podcast is hosted by Co-Founders, Kristen Cruz and Jenn Barbee with Destination Innovate. Learn More! https://destinationinnovate.com/about/
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Well, hi there, Welcome back to Tech Travel and Twang Jen Barbie here with Kristen Cruz. Hey Kristen, Hello Jen, I'm so excited to dig in with you today. You've just been on a whirlwind kind of conference thing happening. You just came back from Texas Travel Alliance Some amazing takeaways and I think it's a great time to talk meeting planners today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, our conversation is definitely going to focus a bit more on the meetings industry because, you know, as we've been following the last few years, post pandemic like our meetings industry market has changed significantly the way planners are having to plan, the way that they got accustomed to planning post pandemic and then now things are starting to get back to normal. There's a lot of things like moving and shaking and you know, the Texas Travel Alliance does a really great job when they do their annual summits to really zone in in different areas, and one of the things they zoned in last week was particularly the meetings industry outlook. And so one of the things we always do is we try to get in there right and, like, find all the nuggets and get all the good takeaways so we can bring it back for conversation. When I presented this earlier this week to a group, I actually put my takeaway based on, like, put some of the stuff in a deck, you know, and presented it. It was about 45 minutes worth of really in-depth information.
Speaker 2:So when I say that this session was jam-packed, it was jam-packed. There were some really great panelists from the DMO side as well as the meetings industry side. North Star, you know, hosted and started a lot of the conversation on the panel and they provided a study too. That was, you know, really impactful. I think just kind of in looking and again, like we're talking about Texas, we're talking about the Texas Travel Alliance really putting some good meat out there for the DMOs in Texas. But a lot of what North Star did was pretty national. I mean, it's really looking at the entire meetings market because obviously.
Speaker 2:Texas brings in a ton of meetings from out of state.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, but it'd be really interesting to see like what, for you, were some of the key takeaways in terms of maybe something that surprised you, that you didn't expect to hear.
Speaker 2:I don't know that it's super surprising, but a lot of the, a lot of the feedback from the panel which I thought was interesting was that the sports market is on the rise. You know, associations, corporate, isn't as heavy as it was and now sports is beginning to, you know, kind of be pretty far ahead of other events that are being planned. But what I will say is that just some key takeaways that I kind of, you know, we kind of expected, because we're in this world all the time with our DMO clients and just the industry in general. There were some that were kind of like okay, that's good to know that what we're anticipating or what we've been thinking is sort of spot on, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And some of the big takeaways are that you know rates are high, higher than what planners have expected in recent years or have become accustomed to. I guess Demand is really strong because the meetings industry is making a comeback that's surpassing 2019 levels. So we're back to normal, but we're also surpassing normal at this point and availability is really tight in a lot of markets. So, you know, one of the key takeaways for the DMO side was partnering with your hotels and becoming very responsive. Like RFP response was a big topic because planners are used to and have become accustomed to. It's almost like that you know buyer's market, seller's market scenario. But from a planner's perspective they became accustomed for a while to the flexibility the DMO was willing to do for them be able to negotiate contracts, have cheaper room rates, be able to pull off a meeting you know that was not as expensive as it was, you know pre-pandemic.
Speaker 1:It seems like over-tourism is hitting the B2B market now, and not just the leisure market, in different ways.
Speaker 2:Well, I think it's there. There's a lot of consumer focused events. That also because attendance people are going back to events, trade shows and expos and you know, comic cons and like all of like the bigger trade shows that are for consumers in general are becoming a lot more popular and a lot more populated because we're all getting back. You know, travel is not a luxury, travel is a now, a necessity. So you're not, you know, and I'll on another podcast we'll go into some of the other like traveler insights, which there were some, oh my goshes in that one when I say some surprising stats.
Speaker 2:we will dig into that on next week's podcast. But I think from a meeting standpoint, yeah, I mean definitely you could you know if you have a convention center where you're typically booking 80% corporate or association events and all of a sudden you have a lot of this leisure bleeding into, you're losing dates, you're losing availability for your association market? The other thing that kind of came away from takeaways was you know, only 15% of our like meeting planner the sample set that the study focused in on only 15% are less optimistic now than they were six months ago.
Speaker 2:And you know we're we talk a lot about political climate, right, like we're in a you know election year where, where we're at, and so that's sometimes affects outlook and, you know, optimism and whatnot, but also because of the availability and the costs. Costs for planners was number one across the board when it came to what they were focused on, what they were worried about, what was, you know, a struggle and a concern for them cost across the board because everything costs more. When you're talking about having to pay your hotel employees and your staff for events, that costs more. Your food and beverage, that costs more. So costs in general.
Speaker 1:Planners are trying not to pass that cost on to their buyers, or so, like the comic cons, they don't want those fees to go up, because then they'll find another place to go. Because, you're right, that is like this new crop up and I don't want to say totally new, but becoming more popular of these like hobby, like trade shows, and so you know, if one's too expensive they're just going to go to another one.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, because the other thing that came out of this, too, was attendance expectations are stronger for 25 than they were for 24. And that says a lot. It says a lot about, like, if I am a comic con, I'm going to we'll use that as our example today, but if I'm a comic con, and I know that I'm going to get more people next year, the outlook or the anticipation is I'm going to have more attendance than I may not have to charge as much because I'm going to sell more of those tickets. And so they're, they're thinking about attendance building and all of that because it could, you know, not be something that they have to pass through to the, to the, to the attendee. But I mean and you, you, we see it, jen, all the time in our industry, just the cost to attend conferences, especially when they're in a larger market, at an actual convention center hotel, like they are extravagant, like I feel like I should go on vacation for the cost that it, for the like registration, it's insane.
Speaker 1:The registrations up and, depending on the venue that you know, those more popular venues like a Vegas, becomes incredibly expensive. When you add on what $12 waters and you just can't do anything in some of those cities $400 a night.
Speaker 2:Hotels. $30 a night. Parking to park at the yeah, it adds up Parking $30 a night. Parking to park at the yeah, it adds up. And so, yeah, that was a huge topic of conversation was just how planners are really worried about the rising costs. The other thing, too, that I thought was interesting was that you know associations. You know associations typically make their money two ways. They make their money from membership, so dues from the association members, but also from events. Associations typically put on a lot more events because they can charge. They may give a discounted rate to a member, but they can charge for those events as well. Well, what came out of that session was that association dues and membership is down, so associations have to make more money at their events. They have to make their events profitable, where maybe the last couple of years they were more so focused on breaking even maybe, you know, like just not being out of pocket, but now it's more like, okay, we have to charge more because of the rising costs.
Speaker 1:Or they can think about their product mix a little bit. I think you know that may be a bigger indication of hey, that may be an older model and how best to serve people now may not be the same model.
Speaker 2:Right, right, yeah, I mean it's definitely a time to shift. If you are thinking about events being like the revenue generator, maybe that's something to reconsider for sure. Some conversation on some of the feedback from the panel. So you know I was talking about cost being like at the top of the list for planners on the on, you know, from what they're worried about to what they're focused on.
Speaker 2:But also underneath that was quality, either of the venue or just quality as it relates to just destination experience, and then accessibility. So ground and air accessibility has become one of the top three and we obviously, like you, got to be able to easily drive or fly into a meeting, and we know this because we've, you know, smaller market DMOs who don't have a close airport or, you know, who are trying to attract those from out of the region, struggle with that, and that was the case, for, I mean, obviously, texas is a giant state and we have our big, you know, we have our big markets, but Texas is a lot of square miles and within those square miles there are several, several destinations that are trying to pull meetings in but don't have accessibility in the way that the larger markets do.
Speaker 2:And I think that I feel like that feeds the availability issue right, because then if you, if you are realizing that accessibility is important for your attendees, you're less likely to book a smaller destination for that convenience and you're more so going to book it because of the accessibility and being in that larger space, you don't? You know, we're not adding venues every day to a to a large market, and so it becomes very compact. But that was another, I think, a good takeaway from it. The other thing that I thought was interesting was how DMOs are planning site visits these days.
Speaker 2:So we're all familiar with the fam tour, you know where you get a group in and you host them and whatnot, for a few days and you really kind of give them a tour.
Speaker 2:You put them in the seat of the traveler or the planner and you just allow them to kind of experience the destination. Well, you know, we FAM tours, I think from a budget perspective, have fallen lower on the totem pole because so much more of our DMO dollar has to go towards advertising and resources. And now you've got social media in the mix and someone's got to manage that, and so one of the things also with the rise of like 360 viewing and, you know, venue viewing and all of that.
Speaker 1:Would also like contribute to that tip.
Speaker 2:Absolutely yeah, resources that you could familiarize your audience with outside of bringing them into a destination. Extremely important because and this is what I found interesting there are a lot of destinations that are being choosy about their site visits and doing a more personalized approach. So, as an example, if I'm Susie B, I'm coming into a destination, or I'm planning around a destination and I'm thinking to myself, like you know, I really like the cost hits home. I'm checking the box on. You know it has the right venue, but I'm not completely sold on safety. Or I'm not completely sold on, you know, walkability. Or I'm really concerned with the political climate because it's in this XYZ state.
Speaker 2:Instead of trying to work with that planner to really kind of sell them from a virtual perspective and change their mind, they're flying people in. They're flying a particular planner with a particular opportunity and going hey, come in, let me show you around, let me give you a lay of the land, and they're dedicating those dollars to a more personalized site visit versus let's get a group together and let's give the group the whole experience, because that that those let's say, 50 of those fam attendees might have already been sold ahead of time. Are they going to say no to a fam? Probably not. They're still coming along anyway. So it's a little bit more of a personalized approach. Again, I think because of the budget situation, not everybody has FAM. Fam tours are expensive and they're extremely hard to plan when you have a tight you know team of people.
Speaker 1:And, like you said, people are going to say, yes, you're going to have a bunch of tire kickers versus a better ROI. On that personalized experience, I like that it is yeah. Really interesting.
Speaker 2:The other thing I think is really important is incentives. Incentives are important. It was really you know they were really trying to hit home with these DMOs in the room that if you don't have an incentive program or if you don't have an incentive in your back pocket, figure out how to get one, because if you don't have one, your you know comp set's going to have one, or your planner has become accustomed to getting one, regardless of whether they've asked for it or not. So they're expecting a little, you know, a little something to sweeten the pot.
Speaker 1:What are some examples of some current incentives they talked about?
Speaker 2:They didn't really go into current, they didn't really talk about their incentives, I think because they obviously are talking to other DMOs in the room.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but just from our experience with our own clients and things that we've seen work, you know obviously room rebates are really important because it gives the planner flexibility in the cost of actually and that's the big cost right being able to host them at the hotel, and food and beverage is a big one. But the other thing is I mean there are creative ways to do incentives if you can't, if you don't have a pot of money to pull from. And that may be partnering with your like local stakeholders or local organizations, even your EDCs, to say, hey, do you guys have maybe sponsorship dollars to throw at this particular conference that we could bring in, could bring in this much revenue for us, maybe by hosting one of their receptions or by hosting breakfast or lunch and covering that food and beverage cost. And a lot of times you can sort of finagle a sponsorship budget into an incentive budget for a conference or an event. But you have to have those partnerships already, kind of working together.
Speaker 2:So it's like a together.
Speaker 1:I think that that way they can probably get very creative with it. And I really liked what you said about the mixing, the sponsorship with the local and the EDC. And I think you know if it's not a regular deal it just seems like a a big, insurmountable task to take on. But I think you know you just gave great advice. But if you just break it down and go talk to your different local stakeholders, gather it up like an Easter basket, Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, we did see in the study, which was really interesting too, is that planners are let me see how they worded this Cause I want to say I want to say this right, they're gaining favor, planners are gaining favor with hotels and we know the importance of a DMO. Right, like, if you're a planner, you want to work with a DMO. That could potentially be your liaison with 20 different hotels, right, versus having to work directly with 20 different hotels. But we notice, obviously, hotels are staffing up on sales managers. They're also going after events. They're becoming a lot faster, a lot quicker, a lot more flexible, but at the same time, hotels have a very limited view of the potential incentive that a conference or an event bringing it to a destination has. They're going to kind of know how they, as the venue, can incentivize, but what a DMO does, and their role in this is to bring the collective together, because the incentive could be completely separate from the hotel and a DMO has a better purview into what that could look like, and so that I think partnership is extremely important. But yeah, those are just some samples of incentives and I think, too, it's do your homework, do your research. A lot of times DMOs do not like they're not out there marketing their incentives and putting them out for everyone, but they're pretty easily accessible. We have found a lot of really great incentive samples for other clients and just as we're doing our own homework um that are just generally available to kind of and you can read the fine prints, um on those and kind of just get a gist of maybe some to just test out.
Speaker 2:I think flexibility is important, so like if you can give your planners an option for an incentive and not stick them in one category or another.
Speaker 2:I think that's important.
Speaker 2:Let's see testimonials, which we already know.
Speaker 2:Testimonials are always important, but I did kind of hear that the best time to really get the best and the most accurate testimonial is right after an event has wrapped, not during the event, not six months later, not when it's time for it to come back around again and maybe come for a second or third year, kind of positioning that follow-up, as we want to know that we did the best job possible for you. So tell us if we did and if we did not, what can we do to make your experience better If you were to book a year two or year three, because if that planner has maybe a few little things like maybe just a few little things little it's that they weren't quite happy with, yeah, they know you're dealing with it early enough and you know about it early enough that if I'm going to plan another event or potentially bring my event back a year from now, that gives you plenty of time to figure that out and to get that in order so that I can make that decision pretty easy.
Speaker 1:You know it's such a better approach because it's a win-win situation versus. I think what we typically see is just that, even if they do the immediate follow-up, it's like can you please give me a testimonial? That's a very different vibe than the win-win scenario you just laid out.
Speaker 2:Right, right, yeah, so, yeah, I think I mean those were. Those were some of the biggest takeaways I did gather. So for anybody listening, watching, if you guys want the deck that we put together, I did capture some screen grabs of Northstar's meetings industry outlook report, which has, like you know, organizations that they surveyed, um, it's got um attributes. You know things that, uh, planners are worried about. You know what challenges do they feel? Uh, or on the horizon, that sort of thing.
Speaker 2:But just a couple of things that I will share from that um is that, when it comes to budgets for events and really what they can sit when we talk about costs and that challenge, um, and really what they consider when we talk about costs and that challenge the top three. That and this is again a study that surveyed the same number of meeting planners in October of this year than it did last year. So it's a year over year and they're basically kind of trying to understand the sentiment. Has it changed? Is it better, worse? But what planners were concerned more for this year versus what they were concerned for last year in the cost scenario, were food and beverage being higher than they expected them to be when they got it.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, sure.
Speaker 2:Rates for accommodations being much higher than they expected and also AV costs being much higher than expected. And obviously with AV, if there's an opportunity to not upcharge like if you are upcharging because you as a venue have resources that you have to pay for that's an uptick. Obviously you have to do what you have to do. But if you're raising AV because it could just be raised and you're not really having to absorb a new cost from last year, that may be some flexibility in the cost scenario. Like, maybe we could cut them a break in this category because you're having to charge more per night and you're having to charge more for food and beverage.
Speaker 2:The other thing that was this wasn't in the top, but this was kind of one of those where it was just a lot more challenge this year than what was surveyed last year is the contract terms and the lack of flexibility, and I don't think there's a lot we can. I mean, yes, there are things that you can do right to mitigate a little bit of that, but I think that planners, again, we got them into this like we got them accustomed to bending over backwards to just get the meeting booked, get it contracted. Whatever we got to do? We got to get people back in our buildings.
Speaker 2:We got to get back to normal in some way. They got accustomed to that, and now we don't have to stay accustomed as an industry. We could, like you know, business as usual, and so they're struggling with that. They're struggling with the fact that they don't get the same flexibility. So that's a big challenge comparatively between that last year and that in this year.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. There's some really good takeaways and I think the biggest part about the mindset of where the planner is now, you know, and where a DMO is now makes a lot of sense. But those are good I mean really good top takeaways. What would your number one, if you were looking or advising a smaller DMO? What has maybe the accessibility problems you suggested? What would be the first thing they could do to relook at their meeting strategy that maybe they should audit or take a good look at?
Speaker 2:I think, as a smaller DMO, not having the accessibility, obviously, you're already limited to the types of meetings you can bring in market and so you're locationally challenged. So you're looking for more of your social events and you're looking for more of your sports events. I think partnership as a small DMO, I think the more that you can understand what all of your departments are doing, your city department, your EDC, your chambers, what your larger venues and larger attractions are doing, because the other here's something that I thought was interesting too when it comes to transient travel, those that are we've typically seen come in in years past where they're doing trainings. Right, they're doing in person trainings and you're booking like a giant training room and you're bringing a bunch of people and they're not doing that as much anymore. So trainings are a lot more e-learning and virtual, which we all know right.
Speaker 2:But what they are doing more of is networking and team building. So if your partners are not focused on, especially ones that can host or handle a large group, either for a team building exercise or just fun for the day or whatever, work with your partners and help them understand how they can market to groups just as you're marketing to groups. I think as a small DMO, you got to build your group marketing village. Who can handle groups and how are you guys positioning them? Offer strategy sessions Like here's what. Here are tips and tricks that our DMO sales managers have used this. This is how they get in front of group planners or, you know, or social group event um people and teach them a few things that they could then use in their own marketing efforts.
Speaker 1:I really liked that last piece. It kind of encompasses all of it, especially with working with your local market, big or small, DMO partnership and communication. I think those things are tremendous, to kind of attack all the other things, but really great outlook, it sounds like from a meetings perspective.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think what's interesting too is that you know, we're what we have heard the last couple of years with DMOs is, and even hotels and convention centers is man, I really wish planners would start planning two or three years ahead of time, right Like this last minute in the year. Planning events is like crazy and it it's stressful. It's stressful on the city, it's stressful on the venue, it's stressful on the planner. So the trend is showing that we are already in that longer lead time. So one to two years out, but going into hopefully it's projected by late 2025, we'll be back to the two to three years and in some cases I mean we've seen some of our clients now are already booking 2030, 2029, 2030. So it's, we're slowly but steadily moving back in the direction of being able to book out much longer and multi-year events, because planners aren't as worried about the multi as they were 21, 22. So yeah.
Speaker 1:So I kind of want to wrap up with this question because obviously I have to dig into the fear part of it. But do you see anybody like concerned about like the meetings market shifting again and not that we have any threat of like shutdown or whatever but are they completely throwing out any type of hybrid or virtual component? Are they still offering those like for general things?
Speaker 2:I think it's still I, I, I think it's still an option for a lot of um association events to do hybrid. Obviously, the venues are still offering hybrid Like that's. I think why? Why the AV cost is still a challenge. That's sort of in the top three. But at the same time, I think that planners have gone through so much logistic over the last few years of contracts making sure that they're covered, these procurement agencies making sure that their clients are covered in the event of you know, these procurement agencies making sure that their clients are covered in the event of you know, and that was a lot. That was a big part of the headache with with the pandemic was we weren't, we weren't really thinking about that. That wasn't really like you weren't really in the fine print going, hey, I need to make sure for a pandemic.
Speaker 2:you know, like I'm covered. But now I think it's absolutely assumed that it's already going to be covered, and if it's not, then it's easily something that, okay, we've got to make sure that we're covered on both sides, just in case, just in the event of but it doesn't seem like that's a big fear.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was gonna say I don't even think it's the case of, like you know, a COVID situation or anything like that. Now, like it could be, we had some conferences obviously canceled because of the hurricane.
Speaker 2:So I'm just wondering like there's some sort of conversation or some sort of tips around crisis or movements or you know that sort of piece that we have to deal with. Yeah, I think I think the being flexible with cancellation need.
Speaker 2:Like Jen, you were part of a cancellation that had to a big event that had to cancel in Florida last week or week before last, I can't even remember right now, yeah, and just having that flexibility in your contract negotiations where you have a point person that you can call up and go, hey, we are, there is a threat of this and whatever that disaster may be, um, being having that opportunity to be able to do that with someone and also being covered in the event of I think ahead of time, yeah, for anything. I think it's just part of it's just part of the, the, the um, the cadence up front. It's like something that's already sort of baked in for the most part with our contracts. But I think we can wrap by saying that we are very optimistic on the attendance growth, meaning, like we said earlier, travel, and even when it comes to those going to conferences, it's not a luxury, it is a necessity, whether it's for mental health, whether it's for continued education, whether it's for personal professional development and even in some of the actual like study data that I saw just generally speaking, for travelers.
Speaker 2:We as a society are in debt up to our eyeballs and we're still traveling Because, again, it's a necessity. So, yeah, and you're seeing a lot of it happen with budgets in general in different companies. You know, professional and personal development is extremely important and so it's not just a oh, you know, it'd be great if we could do this. It's a we have to figure out a way to work this in the budget because it's a necessity.
Speaker 1:So absolutely Well. Thank you so much, Kristen, for sharing all those insights. I think this was a really some really good, great takeaways and opportunities, and we will see you on our next one.
Speaker 2:thank, you guys so much bye.
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