With the economy in a tailspin, cancellations and cutbacks are a fact of life at the moment in the meetings and incentives industry. But the news isn't all bad, and not all segments of the meetings industry are affected equally. The MeetingsNet magazines (Corporate Meetings & Incentives, Association Meetings, Financial & Insurance Meetings, Medical Meetings, and Religious Conference Manager) reached out to readers late last fall in a variety of online polls to find out how they're reacting to the hard times. Here's a sampling of the results.
Cancellations
While many meetings and incentives simply scale back in hard times, this economic downturn is causing a wave of cancellations. Here are the percentages of respondents who report canceling one or more meetings or incentives due to economic conditions:
Meetings
| Corporate planners | 56% |
| Financial/insurance planners | 65% |
| Association planners | 9%* |
| Religious planners | 14%* |
Incentives
| Corporate planners | 16%* |
| Financial/insurance planners | 24% |
| *specifically for 2009 | |
Going Virtual Instead
Webinars, teleconferencing, and conference calls are getting renewed attention as the economy forces meeting cutbacks. Here are the percentage of respondents from four meetings industry niches that said they plan to replace canceled or postponed meetings with some form of e-meeting:
| Corporate planners | 42% |
| Medical planners | 54% |
| Association planners | 38% |
| Religious planners | 31% |
How Will Meetings Change?
Many planners report adjustments to their meeting plans, including shorter trips and smaller groups, to deal with cutbacks:
Percentage who plan to shorten the length of the meeting
| Corporate planners | 52% |
| Financial and insurance planners | 28% |
| Association planners | 6% |
| Religious planners | 21% |
Percentage who plan to reduce the number of attendees
| Corporate planners | 48% |
| Financial and insurance planners | 28% |
Percentage who plan to choose more affordable destinations
| Corporate planners | 65% |
| Association planners | 34% |
| Religious planners | 42% |
Source: All data is from MeetingsNet magazines' online reader polls conducted in late October and early November 2008, except those for financial and insurance planners where we used answers to a poll taken on-site an the Financial and Insurance Conference Planners annual meeting in November.
For more on how corporations plan to spend their incentive dollars in 2009, check out our Incentive Trends Survey starting on page 20.
EIM Layoffs
Faced with the cancellation of a large 2009 travel-reward program for a West Coast automotive client, Excellence in Motivation laid off 34 of its 250 employees in November.
According to Bob Miller, EIM president and CEO, these are the first-ever layoffs for the 15-year-old Dayton, Ohio-based provider of incentive and performance improvement services. (EIM is a member of this magazine's “CMI 25” list of the most influential meeting and incentive companies in North America.) “We had a late cancellation and had to make some adjustments to our cost structure,” he says. “There is no positive spin on that. We hate doing it.” The layoffs affected travel management professionals and support staff.
But while travel-reward programs are off, the company is seeing growth in its marketing and technology services divisions and is hiring in those areas. “Unfortunately, it's a skill-set mismatch,” says Miller of the company's inability to redeploy laid-off employees into the new roles.
