Preferred Hotels and Resorts recently sent around a press release outlining their latest enticement to get planners to book with their properties:
- Meeting and events planners can receive funding of more than $2,000 towards their professional development if they book meetings in properties within The Conference Collection...The level of financial contribution is based on the volume of room nights booked at single or multiple venues.
For more than 300 room nights taken within a year, The Conference Collection will pay up to $500 towards registering for the Meeting Professionals International (MPI) program, or up to $800 towards the Certified Meeting Planners (CMP) course.
If a planner books more than 600 room nights within a year, they can claim up to $2000 towards the Certified Meetings Manager (CMM) program.
This is a little different, in my opinion, from the usual inducements of everything from personal vacations to iPods, which I believe ethical planners should turn down as a matter of course since the perk goes to the individual, not the organization, and it's probably not in the organization's best interests to have site selection decisions based on personal gifties. But this one, while it is a personal benefit, also benefits the organization by having a better educated (one would hope!) meeting planner. But it's a fine line, and I could see arguing that this falls on the other side of it.
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