Plan Your Meetings

Anyone who plans incentive trips knows how essential they are for motivating your sales team and driving revenue. Especially in challenging times, keeping morale high is important. Incentive trips aren’t junkets, they are a reward for high achievers. It is their achievement that pays the bills for the program, not taxpayer money. And those increased revenues are the best chance those companies have of paying taxpayers back. I’d like to get my money back, don’t you?

But, as anyone who depends on incentives business or who plans those trips knows, there is a movement afoot to make people feel like it’s downright unAmerican to meet. If there’s any chance of economic recovery, its to gather, plan out strategies, keep sales teams motivated, team-build and train our workforce to meet new challenges in way they can overcome them.

What will not help anyone is for the President of the United States to be putting pressure on companies not to meet in American cities. Las Vegas has a reputation for luxury, true — but that’s a marketing campaign. If you talk to anyone in that market, they’ll tell you there are major bargains to be had there, especially now. But because of the reputation — not the reality — companies feel like it’s “safer” to reschedule in destinations that are perceived in a better light — even if it costs more money! Like the CEO of Wells Fargo said in his full-page New York Times/Washington Post ad: “Time out. Something doesn’t feel right.”

What is going on here?

The war on meetings is well underway in financial and insurance markets, and it’s going to trickle down to a company and a city near you. Be proactive. Get educated. And be accountable. When you read ridiculous articles in the press about your industry, comment on them. Make sure that you, the experts of our industry are telling the true story of what your work means for companies, the economic recovery, our local communities and the hospitality workers who depend on our business.