
Here are a couple of survey results that can help you justify that next business sales meeting or association conference.
Embassy Suites recently conducted a business travel survey with 709 American business travelers, 21 years of age or older. This is what their research found:
5 video conferences
10 telephone calls or
20 emails
- 96% of the business travelers felt that face time is the most important part of developing and maintaining strong relationships;
- 76% of those who had less face time in 2010, reported that their business relationship suffered;
- 18% reported they lost a project because they were unable to travel to meet the client.
In another survey from Business Travel News of 177 North American business travel buyers, found that 86% of those businesses own the following technology:
- Audio-conferencing
- Web conferencing
- Videoconferencing and
- TelePresence.
However, only 5% required the traveler to use remote conferencing in lieu of travel.
What does this all mean for the event meeting services industry and how can you apply this knowledege to your next event, meeting, or training program? Here are some ideas you may wish to consider:
- Determine the overall value of the event to your attendees, trade show booth vendors, and sponsors. If your attendees are likely to meet 100 to 200 of their peers, trade show booth sales persons will shake hands with 500 people, and/or your sponsors messages are going to be viewed by thousands of people on a computer kiosk or a mobile device, nothing and I mean nothing, beats face-to-face. Quantify your data and share it your potential audience.
- Consider going virtual for those small, internal meetings. My mother always said, "Pick your battles," and she was right. Not every meeting requires fly time, so be the one in your organization to suggest those that make more sense over the web. It will make it much easier to sell the conference or conventions you really want and need to go to AND it will make you look proactive.
- Let your attendees know whose going to be there and what education you are offering…as early as possible. I am a big fan of on-line communities for events as a way to provide buzz and interactive conversations before the event launches. In addition, crowdsourcing is a great way to help attendees shape the agenda and speaker selection.