Medical Meetings: Is a Doctor in the House?

The tradeshow business is all about numbers, right? The show manager with the biggest showfloor or the convention and visitors bureau that books the most room nights is the winner, right?

And yet last year, Chicago hosted 15 Tradeshow Week 200 shows with more net square footage than the Radiological Society of North America Scientific Assembly & Annual Meeting (at No. 38 on the list, it had 519,900 net square feet) and three of them with more attendees (33,924).

Still, Bill Lemmon, sales director for the Chicago Convention & Tourism Bureau, said, "A show like Radiological, that's why we built the West building," referring to McCormick Place West, opening later this summer.

But never mind the tradeshow floor for a moment. RSNA, as it is known, already uses 160 meeting rooms in McCormick Place, when it meets there annually. McCormick Place West will give it 62 more available meeting rooms and a 103,000 square foot ballroom. That's one reason why one of the biggest health care tradeshows finds Chicago attractive (along with the 100 more health care meetings of various sizes it attracted last year).

And why does Chicago like RSNA so much? For one reason, those 33,924 doctors, scientists and other health care professionals will bring an estimated 25,000 family members with them — and very few of the 60,000 or so total visitors will be sharing their hotel rooms or packing their own lunches.

"Everything for us is based on economic impact," Lemmon said. "The delegate expenditure is more important than the square footage."

Lemmon's not the only CVB sales executive and Chicago's not the only city thinking this way. There are tradeshows and conventions with bigger showfloors and more attendees, but there is fierce competition among destinations for the health care meeting — regardless of the size.

According to the Healthcare Convention & Exhibitors Assn., the average U.S. health care meeting last year only had 1,889 attendees. Nevertheless, CVBs battle one another to lure health care professionals to their cities.

What do they do to get them there, and why?

The second question is the easiest one to answer.

"They're very lucrative," said Dallas Convention & Visitors Bureau CEO Phillip Jones.

"They can make you well pretty quickly," said Baltimore Area Convention & Visitors Authority CEO Tom Noonan.

"They're an affluent crowd," said Steve Schell, San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau vice president of sales and services.

Getting them there is easy too, according to some who feel like they know how to do it.

"It's really more a question of meeting the needs of a market, than going out and selling one," said Kay Witt, senior vice president of sales for the Nashville (Tenn.) Convention & Visitors Bureau.

She and others said health care meeting planners want at least some of these things: top-quality hotels and restaurants; the chance to turn the meeting into at least a long weekend, if not a vacation; proximity to health care institutions; meeting space, as opposed to exhibit space; convenience; or — if possible — all of the above.

Nobody has all the above, but they all do their best to get as close to it as they can.

Schell, for instance, is happy to point out the 20-plus four-star and four-diamond hotels with meeting space San Diego has to offer.

"Let's be honest, that's what they're looking for. These people are not going to Denny's," he said. "It's not just in downtown San Diego either. It's also on the island of Coronado, in La Jolla and up in north San Diego County."

Others get plenty of mileage out of the prestige of local health care institutions.

Baltimore, for instance, is home to Johns Hopkins University, regarded by many as the best medical school in the United States.

"You're going to get both a strong local draw and a strong base of lecturers," Noonan said. "Say you're going to do a meeting about pancreatic cancer, you've probably got four or five doctors up there who are the experts in the field."

Nashville, a relatively small city, is home to Vanderbilt University and the corporate headquarters for HCA, one of the largest hospital chains in the United States.

"They draw a lot of interest," Witt said. "We garner a lot of support from them."

Massachusetts Convention Center Authority Executive Director Jim Rooney made no bones about using the intense concentration of institutions of higher education in the Boston area to land the American Urological Assn. Annual Meeting & Exhibition and its 48,000 hotel room nights in 2017.

Philadelphia has created something called the Greater Philadelphia Life Sciences Congress with a volunteer board made up of representatives from local universities, pharmaceutical companies, health care institutions and non-profits to help it attract — not just health care meetings — but events involving pharmaceuticals, biotechnology and even venture capitalists.

"The meetings business is all about word of mouth, but sometimes it's also just being asked," said Danielle Cohn, vice president for marketing and communications at the Philadelphia Convention & Visitors Bureau, on what she expects the life sciences congress to do.

Some cities do feel like they can do it all. Lemmon, who is one Chicago travel executive who does not worry much about the fact his city was eclipsed by Orlando last year as the destination with the second most TSW 200 shows.

"It's quality vs. quantity," he added. "Chicago is a destination more conducive to what the doctors want."

That, Lemmon said, is the previously mentioned health care infrastructure, the right venue and "sophistication."

According to the HCEA, the three most popular cities for health care meetings are, respectively, Las Vegas, Chicago and Orlando — and Lemmon is perfectly happy his city is No. 2 on that list.

"Doctors don't gamble," he said, referring to Las Vegas, and "Orlando is more of a family destination," making his city, in his opinion, the perfect fit.

Finally, some cities sell convenience. Dallas, for example, hosted 25 health care meetings last year (not counting proprietary events, the existence of which remain largely confidential to all but the companies holding them and the CVB), according to the HCEA.

Jones pointed out that Dallas is only three hours from any other city in the continental United States, a plus for busy professionals.

"We're in the central part of the country, in the central time zone," he added. "Our advantage is the great access."