Big Players: Value in Economies of Scale

There will be approximately 2,000 to 3,000 meeting planners at Meeting Professional Intl.'s World Education Conference in Montreal next week. Some work for large companies with hundreds of clients and hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. Others are sole proprietors responsible for organizing a mere handful of events each year.

Regardless of their size or scope, they all have their own stories to tell. They also have their own reasons why they are exactly the right size for their clients. In the next few pages, Tradeshow Week looks at some of the biggest players in the business and some of the smallest.

The roster of larger players we highlighted were chosen for the footprint these companies have left in the business, not necessarily because they have the most revenue, most room nights or largest number of employees. They do, however, have stories to tell about economies of scale, and how that benefits a company or an organization looking for the right places and circumstances to hold its meetings.

• President, CEO and co-founder: Brian Stevens
• Headquarters: Los Angeles
• Founded: 1998
• Staff: 30
• The numbers: 2006 revenue of more than $300 million
• Sample clients: Sprint, Microsoft, School Nutrition Assn., Natl. Assn. of Counties

ConferenceDirect didn't come up with the idea first, but it would not be around today if the company had not taken advantage of the trend toward outsourcing the site selection element of meeting planning, said President, CEO and co-founder Brian Stevens.

"We saw a need for customers to buy hotels like they buy houses, using a broker," he said. "We are expert in selling hotels, so we would logically be a better third party than those who are not."

With a full-time staff of 30, ConferenceDirect has access to more than 200 independent contractors around the country.

When customers needed housing and registration, the company added those services, and now it also offers site inspection assistance, analysis, worldwide representation and product knowledge.

"Our aim is to negotiate a fair and competitive deal for customers, with hotel partners feeling good about the end-user customer," Stevens said.

Stevens began his career with Hilton Hotels in 1978 at the Oakland (Calif.) Hilton, rising to vice president of sales and marketing for the entire chain. In 1998, he left to found ConferenceDirect with Brian Richey. "We have walked in the shoes of the salespeople on property and know how to speak their language," Stevens said.

The current client base encompasses almost 1,000 companies and associations with meetings on the local, state, national and international levels, 56 percent of them in the corporate world, and the balance, professional societies and trade associations.

"Tradeshow organizers are a big market for us because sometimes the housing aspect of the tradeshow is an easy piece to outsource," Stevens said, "and we do not invoice our customers: ConferenceDirect is paid by its hotel partners."

• CEO and founder: Roger Helms
• Headquarters: Scottsdale, Ariz.
• Founded: 1992
• Staff: Approximately 25
• The numbers: Booked 3.2 million room nights in 2006 worth $560 million in room revenue
• Sample clients: Glaxo SmithKline, Nike, Pfizer

Helms Briscoe was telecommuting before telecommuting was cool. In the early 1990s, Roger Helms pioneered the concept of the independent associate, the meeting planner who works off-site in a specialty market and can offer many venue options to clients.

The firm then connected the dots, taking the regional contacts of its associates and turning them into a vast network of destination experts. Today, Helms Briscoe boasts 902 associates in 38 countries and 36,000 hotels in its database. These were put to use serving some 20,000 meetings in 75 countries last year.

Greg Malark, COO of Helms Briscoe, said others have since imitated the independent contractor model, but "what makes us unique is that we have vice presidents in each region with local mentorship and coaching." That and, of course, "our sheer size. The scope of our resources is really what makes us different."

"We have a unique culture," Malark added. "We're the innovator, and we have a lot of pride in that. Someone in Indianapolis booking a meeting for a client in Paris can talk to one of our associates in Paris about the choices they have there."

• President and CEO: Ed Shartar
• Headquarters: Twinsburg, Ohio
• Established under present name: 2006
• Staff: 700
• The numbers: $86 million revenue in 2006
• Sample clients: Consumer Electronics Assn., Natl. Assn. of Broadcasters, Microsoft, IBM, ConvExx

Best known for its core services — registration, housing and meeting management — Experient calls itself "the source for integrated meeting and event solutions." With 10 U.S. locations and partnerships overseas, Experient projects that it will participate this year in more than 3,000 events attended by 3.3 million people who will purchase more than 4.72 million hotel room nights.

In 2003, three of the industry's leading companies, Conferon, ExpoExchange and ITS, were combined under one umbrella, Conferon Global Services. Executives soon began discussing a new name to highlight the fact that the new company provided integrated solutions across the traditional boundaries. They, with the help of an outside marketing firm and an employee contest, came up with Experient, a word meant to illustrate the services the company offers. The logo substituted a stylized person for the letter "i" because, Rick Binford, senior vice president and chief marketing officer, said, "People, and how we bring them together, are at the center of our business."

• President and CEO: Gregg H. Talley
• Headquarters: Mount Royal, N.J.
• Founded: 1987
• Staff: 60 full-time
• Sample Clients: Alcoholics Anonymous,American Headache Society

Gregg Talley and his father, Robert, were both working for a management company when they decided to walk away from their steady gigs and give it a go on their own. Each set up shop in his spare bedroom with a client base of zero ("We didn't want to use any old clients," Gregg Talley said) and built a business from scratch.

The first big meeting they snagged was for the American Headache Society. "It's all about relationships," Gregg said. "We had a good reputation in the field already." Within a year they had moved out of the spare bedrooms into office space.

These days, with a staff of 60 and a health care-centric portfolio, the company focuses mainly on association and convention management. "We are the headquarters for 16 or 17 associations," Greg said. "We do everything for them, including meeting management." One of Talley's biggest clients is Alcoholics Anonymous, whose annual convention draws 50,000 attendees.

The company is family owned and run: Gregg's mother Mary Ruth works in the finance department. "There's a closeness people feel," Gregg said of the company. "(They) see us working together. We're not a bottom-line corporation."

The biggest challenge moving forward, he added, was to further promote the value of face-to-face events to attendees and continually ask, "How do we make sure to remain relevant in order to ask people to spend time away from their office and family in today's world?"

• CEO: Joe Ueberroth
• President: Jerry G. McGee
• Headquarters: Newport Beach, Calif.
• The numbers: $180 million annual revenue in 2006
• Staff: 168 employees
• Sample clients: Healthcare Information Management Systems Society, American Urological Assn., Alzheimer's Assn.

As a publicly held full-service event management company, Ambassadors is in a small crowd (most are privately owned).

And the company is full-service, including "pre-show marketing through post-convention housing audits," according to Gretchen Kihm Stegall, director of corporate marketing. Options even include housing and event registration.

One thing the company started is loss prevention, through the electronic ability to capture "book arounds" at each event.

With eight offices in the U.S. and representatives in six countries, the convention services division coordinates housing and registration for more than 125 programs each year, representing more than 25 clients, including 19 on the Tradeshow Week 200.