The American Dietetic Association's 2010 Food and Nutrition Conference and Expo is going to be headed to Beantown. So is the American Public Health Association's 2006 conference, and the American Association of Orthodontists in 2009. And, if James Rooney, executive director, Massachusetts Convention Center Authority, has his way, hundreds more medical conferences will also be making Boston their new home away from home. The MCCA, which owns and operates both the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center and the Hynes Convention Center, has revamped its sales and marketing efforts to zoom in on the lucrative medical meetings market.

“Previously, we had a marketing and advertising effort that was intended to appeal to the broader marketplace of the trade show and meetings industry. There was very little targeting of any specific segment involved,” says Rooney.

Last fall, MCCA did some research to determine how to better position Boston in the meetings market. “We took a look at the history and found that between 1999 and 2004, 36 percent of the events that were held at the Hynes Convention Center were medical industry events. Then we looked at the calendar from 2004 five years forward to events booked at the BCEC and the Hynes, and 35 percent of those events were medical. So it all seemed to line up,” says Rooney. Among the area's attractions for this particular market niche are Boston's hospitals, academic institutions, and the biotech and pharmaceutical industry presence.

“We also took a look at numbers of people who work in the life sciences and healthcare, not just living in the Boston area, but within a two-hour flight of Boston — over half the people who work in the healthcare industry in this country reside within that two-hour radius of Boston,” he says. Even those who live outside this radius probably have some tie to Boston, Rooney says. “They went to school here, or did some portion of their practice here, or have close colleagues in the area.”

The MCCA put together an ad campaign that will focus more directly on the medical meetings industry for the near future. “We'll do this for the next year and see how it goes,” Rooney says. “But I don't think we'll ever retreat from reaching out to the medical meetings community.”