Ticker:

• Destination Marketing Association International and U.S. Travel Association have merged their foundations. The new institution is called the Destination & Travel Foundation and will focus on the needs of destination marketing professionals and the impact of travel around the world.

• According to new findings from the EventView 2009: North America study, companies that have a process for post-event measurement are twice as likely to receive increases in their marketing budgets as those that do not.

• The Business Travel Coalition has launched tVillage Talent Connections as a service project to assist unemployed, about-to-be-unemployed, or underemployed colleagues in all travel and tourism industry segments. This no-cost program will be run on the LinkedIn platform.

• The Meetings Community, the three-year-old, volunteer-driven meetings-industry listserv and Web site, plans to incorporate as a nonprofit association before the end of the year. MeCo, hosted by Google Groups, has close to 2,500 members.

Sidebar #1 : Send a Message

The Keep America Meeting campaign has been drawing attention to the importance of meetings in the U.S. economy and giving people a way to show their support for the industry. An e-mail petition asks signers to “send a message to our legislators nationwide that we need them to take the proactive step of publicly supporting the meetings and events industry in order to hasten the U.S. recovery.”

Keep America Meeting was created by TBA Global, a meeting and event marketing company, in partnership with the U.S. Travel Association and with support from the Event Marketing Institute. It is endorsed by a nonpartisan group of associations, publishers, and companies, including FICP, Site, and the MeetingsNet magazines.

In late February the site added industry-coalition-endorsed letters to local media and elected officials; links to social networks; promotional downloads including print ads, e-mail buttons, and logos; and links to industry articles. The goal is a million signatures. Sign up at keepamericameeting.com.

Sidebar #2: Model Guidelines for Meetings

The Meeting, Event, and Incentive Coalition is lobbying for the Treasury to adopt its model meetings and incentives guidelines for companies receiving Troubled Asset Relief Program funding. Some key points in the guidelines:

1. The CEO shall be responsible for implementing adequate controls to assure that meetings, events, and incentive/recognition travel organized by the company serve legitimate business purposes and are cost-justified.

2. All proposed meetings, events, and incentive/recognition travel organized by the company must serve one or more specified legitimate business purpose. Each with a cost exceeding $75,000 must be supported by a written business case identifying a specific business purpose.

3. Total annual expenses for meetings, events and incentive/recognition travel shall not exceed 15 percent of the company's total sales and marketing spend.

4. The amount spent for an employee performance incentive/recognition event shall not exceed 2 percent of the total compensation of eligible participants or 10 percent of total award-earners' compensation.

5. The process for approving meetings, events, and incentive/recognition travel, and the procedures for assuring adherence to this policy, will be subject to independent audit to confirm policy adherence.

6. At least 90 percent of incentive program attendees shall be other than senior executives from the host organization.

7. Performance incentives shall not promote excessive or unnecessary risk-taking or manipulation of financial results.

8. All internal meetings or events attended only by senior executives and/or board members shall be devoted to specific business purposes, and participating senior executives shall be responsible for any expenses incurred for non-business-related activities.