SISO Sites: Scouting the Summit

Say "luxury hotel" to your average tradeshow attendee, and he or she will think of something along the lines of a Westin.

Say the same thing to the CEO of a company that owns and operates tradeshows, however, and you'll evoke a much different image: lush golf courses, five-course meals, quiet bars with overstuffed chairs where he or she can discuss multi-million dollar business deals over a warm brandy.

That's the type of place the Society of Independent Show Organizers looks for when booking its CEO Summit, the annual meeting of the industry elite. As seasoned show management executives, SISO members have seen lots of hotels in their day. They're picky. And what's more, they don't want to pay rack rate — after all, they've spent their careers in comped rooms.

It's a tough bill to fill. So, how is it done?

The process starts through word of mouth, said Mary Beth Rebedeau, executive director of SISO. In her seven years on the job, she has been almost solely responsible for the group's meeting site selection.

SISO's CEO Summit Committee picks a general geographical area, and Rebedeau starts researching possibilities in the area, talking to people who have visited resorts there, consulting files she's kept on possible sites, reading what she can about various places, then visiting a select few.

Rebedeau rates them on things like number of flights and price to travel to the city, accessibility of the property to a major airport, meeting and event facilities, acitivities and general ambience. She presents her short list to the committee, and together they pick one.

Current SISO Chair Carl Pugh, also president of Radius Events, said the group decided several years ago that "we would take the Executive Conference to cities where we could get a really good hotel rate and lots of support from the local CVB for food functions and other events, and we would take the CEO Summit to nice places, and if that meant paying a premium rate, so be it."

The point of the CEO Summit, he added, is to attract power players. To do so, SISO has to offer them an environment in which they feel free to talk business with their peers.

The strategy is a tricky one to execute, however. "One person's luxury is another person's mediocrity," Pugh said. An Advanstar executive might think nothing of paying $600 a night for a room, but the owner of a small startup might balk at that price.

"It's a beautiful thing when we're able to negotiate a good price," Rebedeau said. "We do still have an 'ouch' factor."

And negotiating might not be as easy as you'd think. While convention centers and their adjacent hotels will sometimes give away the farm to attract industry organizations like SISO, luxury destinations don't have as much to gain.

Ballantyne Resort in Charlotte, N.C., for instance, hasn't gotten any bookings out of the CEO Summit held there in 2006, said Marshall Hilliard, director of sales and marketing at the facility. Yet he still considers the meeting a success and would do it again.

Why? "We made a good impression on a group of show organizers and industry executives," Hilliard said. "We love to say we successfully handled SISO and (NBC travel reporter) Peter Greenberg, who spoke at that year's conference. Any time we can expose Charlotte and Ballantyne to any industry executives, we're pleased."

Despite the fact that many of the sites SISO chooses for its CEO Summit have little or no exhibit space, Rebedeau said they do sometimes get future bookings out of the meeting, because SISO members also influence the locations of high-level conferences in the industries they serve. She said Lake Las Vegas, site of the 2005 Summit, and the Four Seasons at Troon North in Scottsdale, Ariz., site for 2004, both scored business out of the deal.

"We definitely will roll out the red carpet for SISO, as we do for all our groups," said Randy Emerick, event manager for the Renaissance Vinoy Resort & Golf Club in St. Petersburg, Fla., where the next Summit is booked. "We recognize the potential of this group. We'll be sure we identify the key contacts with the organization and thank them for their business."