After the “Meet Safe” theme of 2022, the recently announced “Meetings Matter” theme for the 2023 Global Meetings Industry Day gets back to the event’s original ambition: to make elected officials and business leaders aware of the value that meetings, trade shows, incentive travel, conventions, and other events bring to people, businesses, and communities.
The day inspires events that range from panel discussions and press conferences to pizza parties and photo opps, and last year, which was largely virtual, saw more than 40 million impressions from 8.5 million people.
The Meetings Mean Business Coalition (under the U.S. Travel umbrella since November 2021) organizes the event and has decided on March 30 for GMID in 2023. It has also looked further ahead, with GMID dates set for April 11, 2024, and April 3, 2025.
Among the year-round benefits of GMID is the toolkit created to support it, which includes fact sheets on the economic impact of in-person meetings and the business value of in-person meetings, ideas for how to participate in GMID, and a long list of talking points that meeting professionals can share and discuss. The 2022 GMID toolkit will remain online until the 2023 version is available early next year.
MMB’s 2022-2023 co-chairs are Martha Sheridan, president and CEO of the Greater Boston Convention Bureau, and Stephanie Glanzer, chief sales officer & senior vice president at MGM Resorts International. Coalition membership includes representatives of major industry associations, convention bureaus, hotel companies, third party planning companies, and other suppliers.
The event’s roots go back to the mid-1990s, when Meeting Professionals International’s Greater Edmonton Chapter launched Meeting Planners Day. In 2015, it evolved into North American Meetings Industry Day, in conjunction with the Meetings Mean Business Coalition and the Events Industry Council, and the following year expanded to its current global name and focus.
