HCEA Report: Meetings Becoming Increasingly Healthy

Staff -- Tradeshow Week, 1/15/2007

Professional attendance at health care meetings rose nearly 14 percent over the last four years, according to a recent report by the Healthcare Convention and Exhibitors Assn.

HCEA will present full results of the study at its 2007 Healthcare Convention Marketing Summit Jan. 18 in Baltimore.

The report analyzed more than 30,000 health care meetings over the last 10 years in order to identify marketing trends.

Among those meetings studied, net square footage of exhibit space was 12.4 percent higher in 2006 than in 2002. The average number of exhibitors jumped an average 15.7 percent over the same period, and the average cost of a 10'x10' booth increased by 9.4 percent.

The full report features a 10-year trend analysis of health care exhibit marketing, specialty meetings and destination patterns, as well as market breakdowns of attendance and exhibit costs.

National gatherings represented the greatest share of meetings covered in the report, 59 percent, followed by state meetings at 28 percent. Meetings classified as international (even though they were held in the United States) accounted for 7 percent; regional and local meetings accounted for the remaining 6 percent. Health care conventions represent a quarter of the entire convention market, the report said.

Eric Allen, HCEA executive vice president, said the study was necessary to serve the needs of the medical industry, which invests heavily in convention marketing. Sophisticated medical meeting planners need resources to help them determine the best strategies for educating target markets based on cost and opportunity.

Allen said HCEA is the only organization with 10 years worth of data on medical meetings; the group wanted to find out what the hard data actually said about it.