New study prices economic value of meetings
Sunday, 13 March 2011
There's a major new piece of economic research that has just hit the US which casts a fresh light on the power and importance of the meetings and events industry and also demonstrates how difficult it can be to measure the full and proper return of some parts of a country's economy.
"The Economic Significance of Meetings to the U.S. Economy" study means that members of the American meetings industry can now quote sound financial figures that support its significant but largely hidden contribution to the US economy. The figures show that its total economic impact is $907 billion dollars, producing or maintaining 6.3 million jobs in the process and contributing $458 billion to US GDP.
Most of the meetings and events we host at One Heddon Street are a small but important part of the story here for British businesses too. Our central London meeting rooms are used regularly for training seminars and workshops, board meetings, brainstorms, client pitches, recruitment drives and a wealth of other everyday business purposes. Using meeting rooms on a pay-as-you-use basis makes a lot of sense, especially in the centre of London. Why pay the overhead on space that you rarely use when you can simply 'top-up' or buy-in what your company needs, precisely when it needs it?
Unfortunately, in holding larger public meetings, such as sales conventions, in public properties some US companies came unstuck a few years ago when they suffered the 'AIG effect'. This is defined as the "alleged tendency of corporations to cut down on lavish expenditures and luxuries in areas like travel and meetings to avoid appearing wasteful in times of economic downturn." As is often the case, the issue was easy to simplify, and also to misrepresent – and the backlash was strong. This new study finally puts a stop to that misrepresentation – in the US at least.
Meetings are an important part of business life, and of business profits.
Philip Parris, Chairman Harvard Managed Offices
