Groups & meetings: Enough is enough

Mar 12, 09 | 1:57 am

By Douglas Quinby

The groups and meetings market is taking a beating. Just pick up the newspaper or listen to an elected official in Washington D.C. and one might be inclined to assume every corporate meeting is but a boondoggle, an exercise in corporate excess.

Of course, we in the travel industry know otherwise. Not all meetings are created equal-not by a long-shot. And we at PhoCusWright also know the value of meetings, a value that extends far beyond the travel industry. In 2006 we conducted a landmark study on the marketplace, revealing a US$164 billion market in 2006 that grew to $175 billion by 2008. (See Figure 1 below.)

Groups and meetings mean business, big business, both nationally and locally, to both the biggest airlines and hotel chains as well as the thousands-tens of thousands-of local small businesses servicing travelers. It has also been a hotbed of innovation as meeting planners, agencies and technology firms seek to drive group bookings online, integrate corporate meetings with procurement and expense management, and leverage social media to augment corporate and leisure group travel alike.

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Source: PhoCusWright