Meetings and Events Industry News

Hospitality brands responded to the threat to the meetings industry by innovating and ditching the one-size-fits all approach. Find out where things are headed next.

Other hotel brands should copy Sheraton's ideas as a way to attract meetings and conventions and build deeper marketing partnerships with local businesses.

Tourisme Montreal is inspiring other tourism boards throughout North America with its successful experiential marketing, special events and multi-prong transmedia communications.

Marriott's new photo-based, searchable Inspiration Gallery provides a quick way for meeting planners to glean new ideas for their meetings and events, based on a specific business objective.

This year's list of 100 top meeting hotels revealed a slight shift away from major hotel brands and traditional conventional cities, mirroring a larger trend towards independent hotels and emerging destinations in the hospitality industry.

The frequency of and attendance at international business meetings will continue to grow thanks to companies' renewed confidence in an improving economy. But the meeting market is moving from Europe towards Asia meaning that the degree of growth for individual cities depends on their location.

The list, even though one-company specific, shows the meetings and conventions industry is coming out of recession as the broader economy improves. Cities with airports near city centers are doing a lot better.

American companies are now traveling to Europe in numbers approaching pre-4Q 2008 levels, but the focus is more on value, emerging destinations, and the next-generation business traveler.

A great annual list from BizBash which honors the not-so-usual suspects in an industry that drives a huge amount of revenues directly into the hospitality and travel sector.

This is an interesting idea from SkyTeam, but it's doubtful this would be the first option that meeting planners would turn to.