Meeting Attendance Costs on the Rise
Airfares are soaring, checking baggage is costing money, and it even costs more to drive to the airport!
How will this affect meeting attendance this coming year? Will people stay home? Or, do you think more corporate meetings will be held in-house? Are companies holding more Webinars (for large groups) and/or conference calls (for small groups)?
Tags: air travel, airlines, economy, issue of the week, meeting attendance, meeting industry
June 3rd, 2008 at 4:51 pm
With rising air fares, this might be a good time for planners to revisit the idea of working with carriers who still offer meeting discount programs. For example, Continental Airlines offers air fare discounts for 10 or more attendees traveling to a specific event. American Airlines also offers discounts off of applicable published airfares to 250 cities in 40 countries. These savings apply to global corporate meetings and incentive events as well as association conventions and tradeshows.
June 4th, 2008 at 10:32 am
It appears now that flights are being cut in many cities. This could be a huge shift in targeted destinations for meetings. Could we see more meeting destinations with “drive-in” attendee demographics?
June 4th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
This article from the Wall Street Journal looks at how airline cut backs will affect hotels…interesting read.
June 4th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
A colleague just sent me this very interesting link -
http://www.aaamidatlantic.com/Outreach/GasInfo
What we are doing more than ever is planning way ahead. Gas prices aren’t going down, so locking in trips now as prices continue to rise, is one way we are trying to save.
Isn’t it funny that people pay $4 for a cup of coffee but $4 for gas seems surprising. All kidding aside, we haven’t seen anything yet - the Europeans have been paying much higher gas prices for years (and they still hold meetings) - it’s about to catch up with us and are budgets are in for a wallup!
June 4th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
Of late, multi-national, US based corporations are beginning to have their meetings sited in the US. Their reasoning is simple, the Euro, British Pound and other currencies are so strong that it is advantageous to hold their meetings here rather than abroad.
Further, I’ve found that companies who are aggressive rather than re-gressive will forge ahead and by doing so pick up a larger market share than those who “pull their horns in”.
June 5th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
Ah how quickly things change! Read Maureen Pickell’s post from 3 June (it’s now 5 June) w/ the advice to use CO bec. of discounts for meetings. And today, CO announced major cuts in flights and increased fares. Sure, you may be able to get decent meeting’s fares but who cares if you “can’t get there from here.”
On the MiForum List (http://www.mimegasite.com) we have had an ongoing discussion of the issues including what associations w/ meetings booked “so far” out (5, 10 years) when a city now has less lift. It’s not really a legal reason to cancel, is it?
Our industry (via CIC perhaps) needs to have some serious conversations about these issues as we watch the lift into some terciary markets (and even some secondary ones) be horribly depleted. I wonder if this is on DMAI’s agenda for their annual this summer.
June 9th, 2008 at 10:38 am
All domestic carriers are announcing schedule reductions. Delta announced job cuts totalling 3,000 to correspond with a 10% capacity reduction. United is cutting jobs and removing 100 aircraft from their fleet. American is shrinking 11% and removing 75 aircraft.
So the cuts in flights are not unique to Continental, and will effect the entire industry.
Continental Airlines is the world’s fifth largest airline. Continental, together with Continental Express and Continental Connection, has more than 3,100 daily departures throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia, serving 145 domestic and 138 international destinations.
June 11th, 2008 at 10:58 am
Social media has made great inroads into corporate communications. Blogs, discussion forums, webinars, etc., are great tools for ongoing projects, planning, and performance boosters. Still, as great as these tools can be, they can’t replace the in-the-skin experience of an on-site meeting, convention, or incentive trip.
Lift into major destination cities remains strong and will probably continue to be. What we will see in the future is more meetings in destinations with good lift and fewer meetings to places that require several connections and longer travel times.