Meeting Associations: It's a Small World After All

The meeting industry, without a doubt, has truly gone global. One only has to consider that Meeting Professionals Intl. has members in more than one-third of the countries worldwide.

And it looks to be getting even bigger with membership growing by leaps and bounds in Sweden, France, Switzerland, Brazil and South Africa.

Overseas, the Intl. Congress & Convention Assn., MPI's sister organization that focuses on suppliers, also is experiencing a surge of new members in countries such as Uzbekistan and Qatar, to name just a few.

With all this growth come the inevitable issues that planners and suppliers alike need to keep in mind. There are more hoops than ever for attendees to jump through to get in and out of the United States. The weak dollar is good for some, but decidedly not for others. Wearing the wrong type of suit or not handing over a business card correctly may be a major insult. And the lack of a proper label on a crate going overseas could cause mayhem.

Tradeshow Week decided to make life easier for meeting planners by shining a light on some of these dilemmas over the next few pages.

In addition, Senior Editor Rachel Wimberly spoke with Didier Scaillet, MPI's vice president of global development, and Martin Sirk, ICCA's CEO, on what makes their global organizations tick.

Question: How has the membership of MPI and ICCA grown globally?

Scaillet: We are thrilled that our membership in the Europe/Middle East/Africa region is currently growing at about 18 percent annually, with increasing interest for new chapters each week.

Asia has proved to be a great force in building our global community as well. The upcoming Asia Meetings and Events Conference taking place in Singapore in October will benefit this outreach tremendously.

Sirk: We've grown by approximately one-third in the last six years, but we've been very careful to maintain quality and ensure that companies join ICCA for the right reasons. Quite often, we'll advise prospective members to put their money into another marketing channel if we don't think ICCA is right for their business objectives.

This careful approach to recruitment has helped us maintain an industry-leading annual retention rate of over 95 percent, with most of our dropouts coming from companies which leave the business, mergers and acquisitions, and occasional localized economic or political crises.

Q: How many members are there and from how many countries?

Scaillet: Over 24,000 members globally; 4,358 international members in 79 countries.

Sirk: We have over 850 member companies and organizations in 83 countries worldwide, covering all the industry supplier sectors: venues, meetings management, destination marketing, transport and meetings support. We're adding between 40 and 60 new members annually (net increases, after subtracting resignations from gross recruitment figures).

Q: What country's membership has seen the greatest growth recently?

Sirk: All regions have done well, but we've seen above-average growth in the United Arab Emirates, United States, Mexico, Brazil and India. We've also signed up our first members in countries such as Qatar, Zambia, Dominican Republic and Uzbekistan.

Scaillet: Our Swedish chapter reached over 45-percent growth last year, establishing itself as our fastest-growing chapter. They accomplished this feat by reimagining their structure and decentralizing the chapters' educational offerings. Now the chapter focuses on covering the entire country rather than just Stockholm.

Another rapidly growing area is France and Switzerland, who worked to attract many new students by establishing a number of partnerships with universities and business schools, thus increasing their membership dramatically.

Regarding South America, Brazil has built their MPI community at an amazing pace. They organized a conference with 400 delegates and increased their membership to over 50 in just a few months.

MPI recently signed an alliance with the Southern African Assn. for the Conference Industry in an effort to support the 900-member association, not only through training and education programs, but also through connections to our membership of over 24,000.

Q: How does MPI and ICCA work with its international membership?

Scaillet: MPI has offices in Canada, Luxembourg (for Europe, the Middle East and Africa) and Singapore (overseeing our Asian development). We have nine chapters in Canada, 11 in Europe and chapters developing in the Middle East, Southern Africa, Korea and Brazil.

Sirk: The most important resource for our members is our unique database of international association congresses, which only covers events which take place regularly and which rotate between at least three countries, so that they are prime targets for future business for our members.

We've now got 11 staff who do nothing but constantly research, update and verify relevant data, and over 250 of our member companies annually send us their confidential past and future calendars of association events hosted to go with the data we source directly from thousands of international association executives.

In addition, the strategic-level education provided at our annual congress, our popular client-supplier workshops and high-level networking are all seen as valuable benefits.

Q: What is the biggest challenge for MPI and ICCA members in regard to the global meeting marketplace?

Scaillet: Timing seems to be our biggest hurdle. For example, (MPI's) World Education Congress takes place in August, a time when most Europeans are on holiday.

Sirk: Our members consistently tell us that their biggest concern is the increased level of competition and the nonstop investment required to maintain and increase competitiveness – there is so much happening on the supply side and so many changes to the way in which clients are organizing their meetings that anyone who stands still is going to be heading backwards at an accelerating rate.

Q: What types of educational programs are there for international members?

Scaillet: Each year, MPI organizes the European Meetings and Events Conference, hosting an average of 600 European meeting professionals. This past April, MPI held the inaugural Gulf Meetings and Events Conference in Dubai, U.A.E., where more than 170 professionals participated in an intensive two-day global educational program.

In October of this year, MPI will launch the Asia Meetings and Events Conference in Singapore. We plan to gather over 250 meeting professionals from the region who are eager to grow their global community knowledge.

Sirk: We run three distinct types of education: strategic level sessions for CEOs and senior directors attending our congress to help them understand how the meetings business is evolving; “how to” research, sales and marketing programs, focusing especially on the international association meetings market; and programs designed to enable our members to share their own areas of expertise, especially where this relates to international corporate meetings.

Q: Are there any future programs in the works for members?

Sirk: We're in the process of drafting our strategic plan for the next decade, which will focus on helping members to be more competitive by understanding better what factors will determine success in our globalized business environment. We'll be getting member feedback on this over the summer.

Scaillet: As an ever-growing global organization, MPI is continually creating new content and programs for our members. The launch of the Asia Meetings and Events Conference this year is a perfect example. Additionally, we have implemented an online certified meeting planner study guide to help all our members prepare for their CMP certification.