Introducing the CMI 25, the industry's first list of the largest and most influential North American full-service meeting and incentive companies focused on the corporate market: a who's who of the companies with which you do the most business.

• ADVANTAGE TRAVEL & INCENTIVES INC. Savage, Minn.
• AMBASSADORS LLC Newport Beach, Calif.
• AMERICAN EXPRESS BUSINESS TRAVEL New York
• BCD MEETINGS & INCENTIVES Chicago
• BI Edina, Minn.
• BUCOM INTERNATIONAL INC. Chicago
• CARLSON MARKETING WORLDWIDE Minneapolis
• CREATIVE GROUP INC. Appleton, Wis.
• ENTERPRISE EVENTS GROUP San Rafael, Calif.
• EXPERIENT Twinsburg, Ohio
• GAVEL INTERNATIONAL INC. Lincolnshire, Ill.
• GEORGE P. JOHNSON Auburn Hills, Mich.
• GRAY CONSULTING INTERNATIONAL MEETINGS & INCENTIVES Philadelphia
• ITAGROUP West Des Moines, Iowa
• MAC MEETINGS & EVENTS St. Louis
• MARITZ TRAVEL CO. Fenton, Mo.
• MCVEIGH ASSOCIATES LTD. Amityville, N.Y.
• MEETING ALLIANCE Robbinsville, N.J.
• MEETING EXPECTATIONS INC. Atlanta
• MERIDIAN GROUP TRAVEL St. Louis
• MOTIVACTION LLC Minneapolis
• MOTIVATION EXCELLENCE INC. Schaumburg, Ill.
• R/A PERFORMANCE GROUP San Francisco
• SDI TRAVEL AND INCENTIVES Chicago
• USMOTIVATION Atlanta

CMI 25 Methodology

In fall 2006, Corporate Meetings & Incentives launched the CMI 25 project, an all-out effort to identify the meetings industry's top North American full-service meeting and incentive companies.

We began with a focus group of about a dozen meeting and incentive planning companies and industry leaders in a “proof of concept” phase to make sure that our core idea was feasible. Then, to identify the universe of potential companies for our list, we used two approaches: We asked our contacts at major hotel chains and other meetings-industry companies to give us lists of who they believed to be the largest full-service meeting and incentive planning companies focused on the corporate market.

We also worked with an independent database company that compiled information from public sources to append meeting and incentive companies on our circulation list with records on revenue, number of employees, and other data. The information collected through the database company is not included in our report; it was used only to hone our list of target companies.

We invited approximately 65 meeting and incentive companies to fill out the CMI 25 questionnaire, asking about their business volume, business focus, employees, company honors, and other company data. The CMI 25 is focused on full-service meeting and incentive companies and does not include site-selection companies.

In the end, when making their decisions, the editors gave the most weight to the information that they received about a company's total number of room nights and total number of corporate meetings and incentive travel programs, but they considered all the supplied information before arriving at the final list.