Meeting planners work for individual companies, associations and trade groups, government, and educational and religious organizations and in independent consultancies, incentives houses, travel agencies, hotels, conference centers, and convention bureaus. The field is mushrooming in people as well as influenced, about 8,000 people in the United States belong to Meeting Planners International (MPI) out of a total membership of 10,300 in 31 countries. This trade association had only 150 members when it was founded in 1972.
Collectively, the MPI membership puts on more than 233,000 meetings-new product introductions, sales meetings, board meetings, annual conferences, conventions, educational seminars, workshops-that are attended by 42 million attendees who generate $13 billion in spending a year. In all, the meetings industry generated $54.6 billion in 1990. The average MPI member is responsible for an annual budget of $2 million, plans 16 meetings, and accounts for an average of 1,200 room nights a year. More than a dozen MPI members plan meetings attended by 90,000 delegates at a time, and a few handle meetings of more than 1000 attendees.
Not long ago, the task of planning meetings and conferences typically fell to a person holding some other job, like the Director of Sales or Vice President of Marketing. Even now, corporate meeting planners may also be responsible for education and training, while meeting planners attached to associations are frequently also responsible for membership services.
But as the cost, intricacies, and options available in arranging meetings have escalated, the function has emerged as a profession in its own right. Whereas meeting planners of a decade ago might have learned through "trials by fire," now it is more necessary to have some formalized training. Even within the field, there is growing specialization of function. MPI, which has a training program, also has its own certification process.
Meeting planners are the producers, directors, writers, and ticket takers of every event. They have to plan for every detail, every eventuality, so that everything flows smoothly. Then they have to solve problems and deal with the inevitable crises that crop up, such as airline strikes, power failures, and lost freight.
"This is an artistic business, as well as a scientific one," said Phil Lee, president of California Leisure Consultants, Inc., a San Diego based meetings consultancy.
"You work six days a week, 18-hour days, and get paid lower than the legal minimum wage," asserted Ann Raimondi, president of The Raimondi Group, New York. "You have to be tireless because you need a lot of physical stamina and common sense, which gets you through a lot of unknowns."
MPI has sorted out 25 main functions of a meeting planner. They are as follows establishing objectives of the meeting selecting the site, hotels, and facilities blocking space negotiating rates setting budgets making reservations for airlines and hotels arranging air and ground transportation planning the program choosing speakers and entertainers planning food and beverage functions ("You have to know what people are eating these days, and not to overfeed them at lunch because they fall asleep, and not to serve chocolate at the coffee break," advised Raimondi) arranging for all facilities, such as audiovisual equipment providing necessary security setting up meeting registration providing support services coordinating with the convention center or hall planning with convention services manager arranging a preconvention meeting taking care of shipping setting up function room preparing exhibits scheduling promotion and publicity orchestrating guest and family programs providing meeting materials taking care of gratuities and supplying a post-meeting evaluation. Apart from these functions, a meeting planner also has to do budgeting, know how to use computers, be able to manage people, and, above all, be diplomatic.
In the past, meeting planners functioned much like travel agents merely taking orders of how many people would need transportation and accommodations at a specific site. But increasingly, instead of just handling the logistics, planners are more crucially involved in negotiations that save the organization enormous sums of money. The planners also play more of a role in the corporate image/public relations aspects of meetings and are becoming more involved in setting goals and objectives of meetings and in giving advice and counsel on how to make meetings more productive and cost effective. Planners have a key responsibility for site selection, a decision that might be made as much as eight years in advance. They must be aware of world affairs and economic trends in order to make judicious decisions.
In many meeting planning offices or departments, a single individual sees a meeting through from beginning to end in others, functions are divided up among specialists such as those who negotiate with facilities and those who actually operate the meeting and arrange travel. Often, the travel arrangements are separated out entirely and handled by an outside travel agency.
Meeting planning is negotiating, planning, and management. It is very much a people business, involves creativity, and affords considerable (even too much) opportunity to travel. It has an element of glamour, and there is enormous challenge. It is also a business of problem solving and crisis management.
"Loving people is basic, but everybody does," said Phil Lee. "You need the experience of handling a project that might have started on a cocktail napkin, progressed to a meeting, and come back into your lap. You have to procure services, harness them, and make sure everything performs where hours and minutes and seconds are critical, and then move on and start all over again. You only need to know half of all the information in the Encyclopedia Britannica.
"It is not quite the entertainment industry," said Lee. 'You can't wear lavish clothes. But it has the excitement of the entertainment business. Each meeting is a production. There is excitement that emanates from the stage. There is an audience. You get a little depressed when the show ends. It is just like show business, but you have to be more responsible."
