The annual RCMA Member Survey gives a picture of religious meetings conducted by RCMA's meeting planners. The 2007 snapshot shows that RCMA members are an important, growing force in the meetings industry as they build on strong relationships with the people, facilities, and communities that provide services for religious events.

The 2007 survey reveals:

• Big Attendance Numbers

  The attendance at meetings conducted by RCMA members increased 1 percent, from 14.7 million in 2006 to 14.8 million in 2007.

• Downtown sites are the top choice for religious meeting planners and organizations, hosting 17.2 percent of all religious meetings.

• Downtown Is Busy

  Suburban hotels grew in popularity as sites for religious meetings.

• The duration of meetings continues to remain stable.

• The percentage of meeting planners who said they use venues throughout the U.S. stands at more than 23 percent.

In 2007, 14,889,757 people attended meetings conducted by RCMA members. To show how much RCMA has grown, just 4.4 million people attended meetings held by RCMA organizations as recently as 1994. RCMA members conducted 16,375 meetings in 2007.

Committee meetings and seminars make up a significant portion of those meetings; RCMA organizations held 5,001 such meetings in 2007. Conventions and conferences ranked second in the number of meetings in 2007, with 4,196, followed by other types of meetings (2,659), and board meetings (2,486).

Downtown hotels continue to be the top choice for religious meeting planners: 17.2 percent of the meetings in 2007 were held at downtown hotels. Downtown hotels have led for the past 13 years.

As the second-most-popular option, conference centers continue to be a popular choice for RCMA planners and organizations. In 2007, 16.6 percent of all meetings were held in conference centers.

Room Blocks

The third-most-popular meeting facilities, suburban hotels, rose in the percentage of business they received from RCMA planners. Suburban hotels garnered 12.8 percent of the business in 2007, up from 12.4 percent in 2006.

Next, camps and retreats continue to be appealing, claiming 11.2 percent of the RCMA business.

In the fifth spot, convention/civic centers decreased slightly in popularity in 2007, with 11.1 percent of meetings, down from 11.6 percent in 2006. Resort hotels also attracted 11.1 percent of the business in 2007. That's a decrease from 11.3 percent in 2006.

Airport hotels remained in seventh place in the ranking. Airport hotels hosted 10.5 percent of the meetings in 2007, up slightly from 10.4 percent in 2006.

Meeting Sizes

Colleges and universities continue to represent an important alternative for religious meeting planners, with 7.6 percent of the 2007 business.

It was not unusual in 2007 for a religious meeting planner to need 100 to 200 rooms for his or her largest meeting. That category made up 16 percent of the survey, while meetings requiring 10 to 50 rooms came in at 15 percent.

Meetings requiring 50 to 100 rooms were 14 percent of RCMA business. Meetings with 300 to 500 rooms were at 13 percent.

Meetings requiring 500 to 1,000 rooms and 200 to 300 rooms both represented 12 percent.

Only 6 percent of meetings needed more than 3,000 sleeping rooms, but those meetings are a significant share of business.

If you are a meeting planner whose largest seating capacity in 2007 was 1,000 to 2,500, then you are not alone in RCMA. A total of 213 respondents (19 percent) said that was their largest meeting of the year.

Eighteen percent responded that 500-1,000 was their largest seating capacity, followed by 100-300 (16 percent) and 300-500 (14 percent).

At the very high end, 3 percent of those surveyed said that their largest meetings in 2007 required seating for more than 25,000 people.

The survey indicates that when it comes to exhibits and trade shows, a significant majority of religious meetings use them. Sixty-seven percent of those surveyed needed exhibit space in 2007, which is a slight decrease from 69 percent in 2006.

The member survey for 2007 showed little change in the size of exhibit space needed, although it is noteworthy on the high end that 6 percent of RCMA members said that their largest meeting required 50,000 square feet of exhibit space.