Skift Take
Meeting planners have a lot of opportunities to grow as professionals by becoming more involved in business strategy, but meetings industry organizations can do more to support that evolution with better event content, versus promotional and generic marketing-speak.
The Future of Meetings & Events
At PCMA's Convening Leaders event in Austin this week, Chris Cahill, CEO of Luxury Brands for AccorHotels, said:
"From an event planner's perspective, it's becoming more important to move more from a logistics to strategic involvement in the purpose of meetings and output of meetings... We can create almost anything you want in terms of trying to achieve your objectives. But having clarity and being part of the team that is establishing the agenda is going to become more and more important. I think logistics are pretty easy to commoditize. They're pretty easy to outsource."
PCMA is pushing for the industry to redefine meeting planners as "Business event strategists" who focus on the business imperatives of events as much as the logistics. Sounds good, but during the Convening Leaders stage presentation with Cahill and the CEOs of SmithBucklin and Freeman, the focus was more on logistics and often generic statements promoting the executives' companies and the importance of face-to-face business events.
Promoting the value of live meetings to the meetings industry? Yeah, we get it.
Another conversation with
