1. Chapter 11 Marketing to Meeting Planners
The most stable and growth-oriented part of a hotel’s total guest mix is the group meetings market

2. The Group Meeting Markets

3. Benefits Additional Revenue Ease in filling slow periods.
Because group meeting guests are more or less a captive audience, they tend to spend more in the hotel’s other revenue centers than do other guests.
Ease in filling slow periods.
Ease in employee scheduling
With groups, the length of each guest’s stay is usually predetermined.
Repeat business
Individuals may later visit the property as business or leisure travelers

4. Group Meeting Market Status
Studies
25 percent of U.S. hotel guests are meeting planners.
Associations: $77 billion a year on meeting
Corporations: $37 billion
Complexes such as the Opryland Hotel in Nashville, the New York Marriott Marquis, and the Las Vegas Hilton attribute as much as 80 percent of their sales volume to convention business.
A Common Misconception
All group meetings and conventions are large gathering of thousands of people. In reality, there are many more small meetings than large ones (75 percent, < 100).

5. Associations

6. Associations An Association Type of Associations
Is an organization of persons having a common interest or purpose.
Doctors, Bankers, Lawyers, Magicians, Beekeepers, Hospital Purchasing Agents, Horseshoe Pitchers, Fruit Growers, etc.
Type of Associations
Trader associations
Professional and scientific associations
Nonprofit associations

7. Professional and scientific associations
Trade associations
Made up of individuals, companies, or corporations that have similar business needs or concerns.
The most lucrative source of group meetings business because their memberships consist largely of successful executives.
Hold conventions in conjunction with trade shows.
Professional and scientific associations
Are closely related to trade associations, but differ in regard to meeting frequency.
Have regular meeting schedules.
Are affiliated with national and international associations, and these groups are typically very large.
The medical meeting market may be of particular interest to properties that wish to market to professional and scientific associations.

8. Nonprofit organizations
Its makeup of social, military, educational, religious, and fraternal groups, this nonprofit segment has been given the acronym SMERF.
SMERF groups are now a major market segment for many properties and share a number of characteristics: Changing yearly ,meeting schedules, Off-season, price-sensitive (see Exhibit 1).

9. Types of Association Meetings
Annual conventions
Two-thirds of all annual conventions are held in conjunction with a trade show or with exhibits.
State and regional conventions
Are smaller in scope than annual conventions and are further limited by geographic restrictions.
Conferences
Supplies information related to new developments of interest to the association’s members
Seminars and workshops
Similar to conferences but are smaller in scope.
Board and committee meetings
Are the smallest association group meetings in ternms of attendance.

10. Planning Factors for Association Meetings
Timing
Lead time: two years.
Geographic pattern.
Geographic restrictions.
Attendance (see Exhibit 2).
Site selection requirements.

11. Whom to Contact. Professional meeting planner Association executive
Site committee chairperson
Board of directors chairpersons or member
Local association member

13. Corporations
Corporations can be a highly lucrative source of group business. Average 14 meetings or conventions in a single year.

14. Types of corporations Corporations vary greatly in size and purpose.
Local, state, national, and international corporations that sell products, services, or both.
At one time or another most corporations hold group meetings that require lodging facilities.

15. Types of Corporate Meetings
National Sales Meetings
Regional or district sales meetings
Training seminars
New-product introductions
Management meetings
Stockholder meetings
Incentive trips.

17. Planning Factors for Corporate Meetings
Timing
Lead time: one year or more.
Geographic pattern.
Geographic restrictions.
Attentdance.
Site selection requirements

19. Whom to Contact

20. Finding Association and Corporate Group Business
Sources.
Trade periodicals and directories for leads and the names of key decision-makers.
Account files of previous group meeting business
Local newspapers fro news of associations and corporate groups.
The yellow pages of the local phone book and the phone book of the state’s capital city.
The reader boards of competitors
Word-of-mouth referrals.

21. Suppliers of products or services.
Your property’s employees.
Internet.
Local and state chambers of commerce
Convention and visitors bureaus
Industrial commissions

22. Reaching Associations and Corporate Meeting Planners

23. Reaching methods Haphazard way of Reaching meeting planners.
Buy a mailing list of meeting planners and send direct mail pieces to everyone on the list.
Better way
Thorough research and aim selling efforts at a small group of 30 to 40 “hot prospects.”
Pace reports
Cover every month for the next five years to track bookings and assist in pricing for cost-effective groups.
Lifetime value of the account.
Evaluating the total revenue potential of a group.
Face-to-face selling is most effective way.

24. Face-to-face selling Personal sales calls Sales Blitzes
The best way to sell to meeting planners.
Schedule an appointment call to meet the meeting planner and learn his or her needs.
Develop a tailored presentation for your sales call.
Sales Blitzes
An intensive survey of a given geographic area over a specified time period to gather information.
Planning is the key to a successful sales blitz (see Exhibit 6).

25. Trade shows
Attendance at trace shows can help build a client base for all types of properties.
Types of trade shows
Exhibit show: booths that enable exhibitors to distribute materials and talk to buyers
Marketplace show: a structured environment of scheduled appointments between buyers and sellers.

26. Print Advertising Other sales tools See Exhibit 8.
Trade journals or magazines or in the business or social section of newspapers in key feeder cities.
Other sales tools
Direct mail and collateral materials (see Exhibit 9).
Internet.
Familiarization tours and public relation activities.