PCMA Attendees Treated to News Scoops

This year’s Professional Convention Management Assn. Annual Meeting, Jan. 10-13 at the Dallas Convention Center, served as a forum for a myriad of industry developments:

• PCMA held its first CEO Summit for convention center and convention and visitors bureau CEOs Jan. 10 at the Dallas Hyatt Regency, funded by a PCMA educational foundation grant. The summit united 50 convention center and CVB executives who initiated a formal program to “orient convention center and CVB volunteer leadership to the realities and idiosyncrasies of destination management, facility marketing and the meetings and convention industry in general,” according to PCMA officials.

Deborah Sexton, president and CEO of PCMA, said finally, destination stakeholders may be better educated on the value of the industry. “Collaboration is the key to ensuring the future success of the meetings industry, and PCMA is proud to help facilitate progressive programs like the CEO Summit,” she added.

• PCMA honored G.J. Hart, director, president and CEO of Texas Roadhouse, with the PCMA Chairman’s Award at the annual meeting’s general session Jan. 11.

According to PCMA, Hart was chosen for his support of incentive-travel programs as cost-effective, important investments in the face of many companies cutting back on meeting expenditures and canceling meetings.

John Folks, 2009 PCMA chairman, said Hart deserved the honor. “G.J. proved an important voice and advocate for the value of meetings at a crucial time and deserves to be recognized for his bravery and eloquence in the face of an anti-meetings media firestorm,” Folks added.

• Freeman announced Jan. 11, as part of its five-year plan to offer exhibition contracting and marketing services and aided by its recent alliance with sales and marketing services company Maritz, it is poised to elevate face-to-face marketing, with solutions that will solidify the company as the industry benchmark.

The Freeman-Maritz alliance has created a virtual engagement platform that takes face-to-face into the virtual world, according to Freeman officials, and it has attracted TSW 200 clients like the Graphic Arts Show Company.

Chris Price, vice president of GASC, said of Freeman-Maritz’s new solutions, “We believe that by producing a virtual preview of our upcoming Graph Expo show, we will engage past attendees early on at an entirely new level, strengthen their interest and commitment in attending, attract new prospects that have not responded to other marketing vehicles and deliver an even more engaged audience to our exhibitors.”

• The Destination Marketing Assn. Intl. announced Jan. 12 more than 100 destination marketing organizations created empowerMINT.com, the industry’s first “collective portal of meeting destinations and the largest repository of post-event reports.”

DMAI said the Web site is the fastest, easiest way for industry professionals to connect with local destination experts for leads and unbiased expertise on the cheap. It features Planner Access, an application for meeting professionals to access accurate post-event reports.

Christine Shimasaki, DMAI’s managing director of empowerMINT.com, said of the application, “We are extremely excited to bring to the industry a process for planners to review this information, as it addresses an important concern that many planners expressed in the past, which was to ensure the data accurately reflects their event.”