Plan Your Meetings

New planners’ exchange group stirs controversy

By Kristi Casey Sanders

Part humanitarian organization, part meeting planner resource and part union public relations department, the Informed Meetings Exchange (INMEX) is a controversial new organization that gives meeting planners a record of individual hotel and global hotel corporations’ human rights and labor infractions, advice on the kind of verbiage needed in contracts to protect future meetings from interruption during labor actions, and advance-warning alerts when labor actions threaten cities or hotel properties.

INMEX is sponsored by hospitality labor union Unite Here, which made headlines this year with its aggressive “Hotel Workers Rising” campaign. Part of the campaign involved contacting planners who had meetings scheduled in a city or a hotel where potential strikes or boycotts could occur, a tactic which drew fire from hotels as well as from industry groups such as Meeting Planners International. Because of this, members of the hotel industry are skeptical of INMEX’s ability to maintain objectivity or autonomy from its labor union roots.

Unite Here President John Wilhelm says INMEX is an independent nonprofit organization with its own full-time staff and board, created to fill a void in the industry. “We were struck by the demand and need for the skilled meeting planning assistance that INMEX will provide,” Wilhelm said in a press teleconference June 28. “We discovered in the course of figuring out how our workers and our union should respond to the globalization of the major hotel management companies that it is not only workers who are challenged by the new environment presented by global hotel companies, but that customers are challenged as well, in particular, the group business, meetings and conventions that constitute at least a third of the total revenue of the major hotel companies. We discovered that the interests of customers and groups go well beyond labor unions.”

In addition to giving planners labor alerts and contract advice, INMEX hopes to act as a clearinghouse of information, taking post-event surveys to gather information on the rates planners are negotiating and the fees hotels are charging to encourage greater transparency within the industry.

INMEX and labor-hotel negotiations

For the hotel industry, the question is the effect INMEX will have on upcoming hotel-labor disputes.

“I think it’s very interesting that they started this thing right before the New York negotiations,” says Joe McInerney, president and CEO of the American Hotel & Lodging Association (AH&LA). “And [this year] there are going to be negotiations in Honolulu and Monterey and Chicago, in Boston, in L.A. and still ongoing in San Francisco. We feel that the union is trying to use meeting planners as a pawn in their negotiations.”

One global hotel corporation mentioned several times during INMEX’s teleconference launch was Hilton Hotels Corp. Prior to the expiration of New York hotel labor contracts on July 1, some of the major hotel chains, including Marriott International Inc., Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide and InterContinental Hotels Group, came to a tentative agreement with the labor unions on a six-year contract with wage increases and increased benefits. Two major hotels owned by Hilton, the Waldorf-Astoria and the New York Hilton, were excluded from the joint negotiations so the union could focus on them separately. The hotels extended labor contracts to July 14 to avoid a potential strike or lockout over the Fourth of July holiday weekend, but it is uncertain what kind of agreement will be reached.

McInerney says he’s concerned INMEX will use its influence with planners to target hotels in similar positions. “[INMEX has] a different agenda than being the savior of the meetings industry,” he says. “Overall, their plan is to grow membership. To tell meeting planners to meet at meeting-friendly hotels, ones that are not having any type of action …

“We feel that the union really is trying to tarnish our reputation and to tarnish certain hotels’ reputations, and to hurt hotels that don’t agree with their issues.”

The power of the meeting planner

Meeting planners can have a major impact on a city’s economy and hospitality industry. Last year, the city of San Francisco lost at least $1.8 million when the Organization of American Historians moved its annual convention of 2,200 historians to San Jose after representatives of Unite Here Local 2 told the group’s meeting planners about a potential labor action. The meeting was moved after 75 percent of the group’s presenters and participants surveyed said they would not cross a picket line.

In a joint press release that followed the incident, Meeting Planners International (MPI), the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) and the Professional Convention Management Association (PCMA) chastised Unite Here for its direct involvement with the meeting planners and said they “condemn any effort to cause widespread disruption of the meetings business, which may cause great injury to the economic stability of the targeted cities as well as the economic livelihood of the hotel employees at the targeted properties.”

Freedom of speech and freedom of choice

Louise Upshaw-McClenny, president of training and consulting company Achievers International, which specializes in the hospitality industry, presents another view. “The folks at Unite Here are entitled to interact with meeting planners and hotel employees in whatever way they feel important,” she says.

“I think the more information that we all have, the better choices and decisions we can make. Most planners want to use their own association’s legal council to get their own perspective, but I think it’s important for all of us — planners, hotels or labor unions — to have freedom of speech and freedom of choice. … INMEX brings another perspective and a point of view that’s important and deserves to be heard.”

Meeting with a mission

INMEX boasts more than 100 members in America and Canada, representing $200 million in annual group sales to hotels. In addition to unions, membership includes diverse groups such as the National Council of La Raza, NAACP, American Studies Association, and the San Jose Convention and Visitors Bureau.

At the June 28 launch, representatives from member groups spoke about the importance of INMEX’s services to companies wanting to align meeting planning with core corporate values.

Cecilia Munoz, vice president of the National Council of La Raza, said knowing how the hotel industry treats its workers and customers is most important. “We have approximately 20,000 people participate in our annual conference each year,” Munoz says. “That translates into millions in economic impact to a destination city. Most of the people that make our conventions successful are the men and women who clean our rooms, serve our food and prepare our meals. … [INMEX] provides us key information … so that we can make responsible business decisions that affect our members in a positive way.”

John Stephens, executive director of the American Studies Association (ASA) and INMEX’s chair, said that ASA has been working on formulating a policy of maximizing the impact of its meeting and convention dollars since the mid-1990s. “We sought to meet in communities where our dollars would actually make a positive difference … and realized it was vitally important that we work at some point in a coalition. INMEX gives us this opportunity.”

In addition to providing members information on potential labor disputes, strikes, boycotts or upcoming negotiations, INMEX seeks to promote communication between member groups so planners can exchange ideas and suggestions on best practices and contract negotiations.

McInerney, however, is not convinced. “Smart meeting planners will go to the AH&LA Web site, to the PCMA Web site, the MPI Web site,” he says. “The meeting planner Web sites will have a more objective view than the Unite Here site.”