According to a recent study by Yesawich, Pepperdine, Brown and Russell, things are looking good for meetings. “The meeting market is likely to grow in the next 12 months. Corporate meeting planners are planning to book an additional 4.2 off-site meetings in the next 12 months, while association meeting planners are planning to book an additional 1.2 off-site meetings.”

The top 10 factors corporate meeting planners say they are extremely or very concerned with are (in descending order):
* Making the meeting agenda relevant
* Convention services staff
* Room rates
* Accessibility of the destination by air
* Cost of food, beverage, entertainment at the destination
* Cost of flying to the destination
* Availability of low cost air carrier service to the destination
* Hotels or resort security services
* Internet access from all meeting rooms
* Meeting attendance projections
* AV company services
* Adequacy of high speed Internet service

The top 10 factors association meeting planners say they are extremely or very concerned with are (in descending order):
* Making the agenda relevant
* Room rates
* Convention services staff
* Meeting attendance projections
* Cost of food, beverage and entertainment at the destination
* Accessibility of the destination by air
* Cost of flying to the destination
* The popularity of the destination
* Availability of low cost air carrier service to the destination
* Availability of new/interesting speakers
* The popularity of the hotel/resort
* Accessibility of the destination by car

The study also found that attendees are still demanding, and planners are still stressed out. Not a shocker. Also, the report found that planners are using hotel Web sites more than ever, and they really like online meeting room floor plans, meeting room capacity charts, and detailed destination maps.

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Preferred Hotels and Resorts recently sent around a press release outlining their latest enticement to get planners to book with their properties:

Meeting and events planners can receive funding of more than $2,000 towards their professional development if they book meetings in properties within The Conference Collection…The level of financial contribution is based on the volume of room nights booked at single or multiple venues.

For more than 300 room nights taken within a year, The Conference Collection will pay up to $500 towards registering for the Meeting Professionals International (MPI) program, or up to $800 towards the Certified Meeting Planners (CMP) course.

If a planner books more than 600 room nights within a year, they can claim up to $2000 towards the Certified Meetings Manager (CMM) program.

This is a little different, in my opinion, from the usual inducements of everything from personal vacations to iPods, which I believe ethical planners should turn down as a matter of course since the perk goes to the individual, not the organization, and it’s probably not in the organization’s best interests to have site selection decisions based on personal gifties. But this one, while it is a personal benefit, also benefits the organization by having a better educated (one would hope!) meeting planner. But it’s a fine line, and I could see arguing that this falls on the other side of it.

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Stephanie Downs at ConferBlog brought this one to my attention: a new, wireless videoconferencing system that she says will "the concept of the ‘meeting room’ goes out of the window, literally."

Instead of being stuck in one location, now you can videoconference while walking around, powered by batteries. While I can see it would be useful for a lot of types of meetings, I seriously doubt it’ll revolutionize the industry.