Face to Face : Preference for Roundtable Spawns Need for Conference Centers, Planners
When teleconferencing was introduced with fanfare to the business community in the 1970s, some touted it as a technical wonder that would help companies trim corporate travel budgets by reducing the need for in-person conferences and meetings.
Indeed, the number of teleconferences--electronic communication by voice and visual means--has risen during the past decade. But at the same time, the number of in-person conferences and gatherings--in groups from 3 to 300--has skyrocketed, which has bolstered the hotel business, created a demand for resort-like conference centers and boosted the fortunes of those whose specialty is planning business gatherings.
“Teleconferencing . . . has just never taken off the way people thought it would,” said Christine Levite, managing editor of Meetings & Conventions magazine. “It works against the motivation of the hospitality industry. For a hotel to install a teleconferencing system implies that they don’t want people to travel and meet in their hotels. Also, people don’t want a substitute for actually meeting each other.”
Nationally, the number of in-person business meetings has increased 14% during the past two years, Levite estimates, to more than 807,000 from 706,000 in 1986.
Demand for Organizers
Eric Arnum, editor of the trade newsletter Electronic Mail & Micro Systems, agrees. “It’s human behavior we’re talking about,” he said, “and that’s why (in-person) meetings are more popular than ever.”
Locally, business meetings other than big conventions created about $300 million in revenue in 1987, according to estimates by Ty Stroh, vice president and general manager for the Greater Los Angeles Visitors and Convention Bureau. Stroh projects that revenues for such meetings will grow to about $400 million this year.
“When times are good, people meet for fun and to boost morale at the business,” said Stroh. “When things are bad . . . they meet to offer the carrot to those employees to meet their goals.”
The rise in business meetings and conferences--gatherings for sales or other general business, incentive programs, marketing and strategy sessions, planning, training and educational seminars--has been good news for the young and robust business that plans and coordinates conventions, business meetings and conferences.
Some companies have their own full-time meeting planners on staff--C. B. Kelly of Atlantic Richfield, for example. As manager of conference planning, Kelly directs a staff of five that plans Arco meetings as well as gatherings for other organizations on a contract basis.
“There are also more types of groups meeting and more types of meetings,” Kelly said. “As business becomes more specialized and people become more specialized, it creates a need to convene. . . . Specialists (need to) tell each other what they are doing.”
As meetings proliferate, so does the demand for those who organize business meetings on a contract basis. In fact, the demand for meetings has spawned a professional association, Dallas--based Meeting Planners International, whose membership includes about 8,000 independent and corporate-affiliated planners, according to Gary Rosenberg, a director of the international association and executive secretary of the 500-member Southern California chapter.
“Meetings are being done more professionally,” said Rosenberg, co-owner of Los Angeles-based Rosenberg & Risinger, a meeting consultant firm. “You can’t tell a secretary to call a hotel and set up a conference and do it professionally. . . . You can save money with a professional . . . because rates can be negotiated.”
With the profession growing, planners needed an association to provide training and skill-honing seminars, according to Jennifer Wilson, planning manager for the West Coast operations of the Price Waterhouse accounting firm. Wilson said hotel staff members are often relieved when they learn that a group has a professional meeting planner because the planner--not hotel employees--will be responsible for details of the gathering.
Meeting mania has also boosted the hotel industry and fostered the growth of the relatively new conference center business. Those centers, many of which also offer lodging, are facilities specially designed for business meetings and other group gatherings. The facilities, which are for-profit establishments that have no affiliation with hotels, do not cater to large conventions that typically attract thousands of visitors.
To be sure, there are many longstanding nonprofit conference centers--UCLA has one, for example--but they often have been used more for government or academic gatherings than business meetings. Hotels have traditionally been the most popular spots for business meetings.
But the new breed of conference centers is taking some of that business. One of the nation’s newest and most successful conference centers is Chaminade in Santa Cruz, which opened in 1985. Situated on 80 acres of forest, the center has more than 150 guest rooms, 10 meeting rooms, restaurants, tennis courts, swimming pools and jogging trails, and is known for its natural beauty and planning services. It is owned by a private partnership known as Chaminade Ltd. (The name Chaminade comes from a Catholic teaching order; the center was originally a Catholic boys high school.)
“It’s a beautiful, practically perfect setting,” said John Wilderman, president of the International Assn. of Conference Centers, a trade group including about 200 members. “I’m impressed with the kind of business they draw.”
Many in the conference center industry say Chaminade is a model for the industry in general and for California in particular because of its well-equipped business facilities in a resort-like setting.
“Someone will come in with a similar high-visibility conference center and do well, and there will be a landslide of conference center construction,” Wilderman said.
