Meetings Industry issues dire warnings

Today’s Financial Times reports that executives from the largest hotel chains have written to members of the US congress warning that companies are canceling meetings because they fear being criticized.

This follows President Obama’s recent comments that companies receiving government bailouts should not “go to Las Vegas on the government dime.”

Meeting cancellations threaten 250,000 US travel related jobs this year, claim the hotel executives.

The 4,000 members of the National Speakers Association are no doubt finding that meeting cancellations are affecting their bookings. As face-to-face meetings decline, options such as teleseminars and Cisco TelePresence Suites are emerging as alternatives.

Although it’s probably too soon to say that “What happens in TelePresence stays in TelePresence.”

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Yes, it makes so much sense for big corporations to keep the money instead of dispersing it back into the economy by canceling business-as-usual. Not every meeting, conference, or getaway-reward is wasteful. A bad economy is the worst time to cease educational & morale boosting activities.

My sentiments exactly! When people stop expecting others to use their good judgment, we end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater! I did a blog post on this last week, when Wells Fargo announced they were canceling ALL meetings: http://simplifiedstrategicplanning.blogspot.com/2009/02/strategic-planning-cancelled-meetings.html

Sue Herskowitz-Coore’s response to the FT article is to call for Americans to ‘Meet! it’s the Patriotic thing to do’

It’s time to stop acting like spending money on meetings is a waste of money and time to realize that meetings help the companies holding them make money … The reality is that meetings can not only help corporations profit, they can help the nation prosper.

Well said!

Meetings Mean Business is a grassroots campaign whose goal is to protect the millions of American jobs that depend on business meetings and events. Right now, events across the country are being canceled because of dangerous political rhetoric and media sensationalism that attempts to embarrass corporate America away from travel at the expense of working Americans. If our government is serious about recovering our economy and creating new jobs, we need a robust travel industry that supports the jobs of millions of hardworking Americans in hotels, restaurants and conference centers all around the country and empowers businesses who rely on travel for meetings, events and performance incentive programs to recover and grow.

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