A packed house of over 200 meeting industry professionals spent their morning at the Washington Convention Center to hear from industry luminaries on Capitol Hill’s latest and discuss industry challenges on the 2024 Global Industry Meetings Day (GMID).
The session’s keynote speaker, Melissa Froehlich Flood of Marriott International, started the day by asking the audience to think about how they can all “navigate the gray.”
Nicole Porter of U.S. Travel asks the industry to focus more on advocacy. She asks all of us to help strengthen our Congressional champions. She adds that it’s not just hoteliers and suppliers that can make a difference; planners can advocate at all levels of government by telling the story about how their meetings are special and impact the industry as a whole.
We asked some of the speakers about the most pressing challenge they’d like to see addressed this year. Several, including Jim Kelley of Fern Expo, cited challenges in communications and compressed timelines. Kelley suggested that one key challenge, post-COVID, is compressed event timelines due to factors like limited labor resources. This has resulted in delays in information dissemination and later registration periods, causing a trickle-down effect.
Hootan Kaboli of Events DC said, “I think it’s the coordination between the customer and the sales manager being able to pull data from their respective decision makers and being able to collaborate and execute in a timely fashion.” He said that many suppliers are combatting this with more labor, but that practice is not sustainable over an extended time frame.
Johnathan Wilbert of Projection AV spoke about the challenge of producing realistic costs for clients due to varying labor rules at a venue and increased shipping costs.
The panel moderator Leah Lewis, CMP, DES, of the American Gear Manufacturers Association wants to redirect the focus back to business relationships. She said the hospitality industry has strayed from relationship-based practices and has become much more transactional.
Do you have a takeaway? Post it on social media with the tag #meetingsmatter.
Darryl Diamond, CMP, HMCC, Associate Director of Meetings, American Headache Society®
