The incentive travel business continues to show signs of improvement and while its recovery seems to be lagging behind the broader meetings market, the consensus among incentive planners is that there is room for optimism.
“We are seeing good movement across all sectors,” said Jane Herod, COO of St. Louis-based Maritz Travel Company, at a roundtable of leading incentive experts convened this summer by Successful Meetings’ sister publication, Incentive. “I would estimate about 90 percent of the clients that cancelled programs previously have brought their incentives back.”
While decreasing concern about negative public perception is one of the main engines driving the return of incentive travel programs, there are two new hosted-buyer trade shows turning the industry upside down and shaking out the dust: AIBTM, which took place in Baltimore in June, and the upcoming IMEX America show in Las Vegas October 11-13.
The two shows are spin-offs of the long-established and successful Reed Travel Exhibitions’ EIBTM in Barcelona and the IMEX Group’s IMEX in Frankfurt. In both, hosted buyers with mandatory, scheduled appointments predominate—although many non-hosted buyers attend as well—and the education seminars, while extensive, are not allowed to interfere with appointments.
Show Me the Buyers
“I think we’re going to see a reinvigoration of the incentive travel business on the heels of all of this other healing that we’ve had,” says Jane Schuldt, vice president of the Site International Foundation and president of World Marketing Group, which represents destination marketing companies in long-haul destinations including Asia and Europe. “I’ve been going to those European shows since they were founded, and there’s always a sense of excitement, and a momentum and an energy level.”
While noting that it’s too early to say whether the new shows will change the meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions (MICE) landscape, Deborah Sexton, president and CEO of the Professional Convention Management Association (PCMA), says the old model has to change with the times. “Today, to get people out of their offices, you have to make it a very meaningful experience,” Sexton says. “There has to be quality education, quality networking opportunities, and quality exposure on a trade show floor.”
One buyer who agrees is Bill Boyd, president and CEO of Irving, TX-based incentive house Sunbelt Motivation and Travel and a past president of Site. “I am going to IMEX America and not to the Motivation Show,” says Boyd. “I feel that IMEX and AIBTM, with their hosted-buyer programs, are attracting the suppliers I need to talk to, and the Motivation Show is lagging. And while it’s a good show, I don’t have time to go to two.”
Meeting Professionals International (MPI) is one industry organization leading the charge to the new shows. As IMEX America’s major strategic partner for education, the organization is turning its long-standing Meet Different conference into the core of IMEX America’s pre-exhibition “Smart Monday” learning day.
“I think our marketplace really is shifting, and we have an opportunity to shape it,” says Bruce MacMillan, MPI’s president and CEO. “What’s driving it is a greater return on time, a greater return on relationships—instead of going to a trade show where someone has to hope he might run into the right person with the right business services, or the right business profile. Those days are gone.”
Jordan Clark, vice president of sales for Las Vegas Meetings by Caesars Entertainment, agrees. “The two new shows will be good not only for the incentive industry but for the business overall,” says Clark. “The introduction of these two shows into the U.S. is really putting a little discomfort in some of the older, more traditional shows we’ve been going to in the past.”
The New Shows
“There’s tremendous excitement and interest from the industry,” says Ray Bloom, chairman of the IMEX Group. “With that comes tremendous support. Both Maritz and Carlson Marketing are holding their major client events around [IMEX America], so they are going to be heavily represented. And not just them, of course. The hosted-buyer program, when we started off, was 1,500. It will be over 2,000. And demand for space [from exhibitors] greatly exceeds what we’d been forecasting from the beginning.”
James LaValle, manager of corporate events for Meetings and Exhibitions Hong Kong, is one supplier helping to increase demand. While still planning his IMEX America booth, LaValle says, “We hope to have eight to 10 companies with us from Hong Kong” at that show. An even bigger push is coming from the Mexico Tourism Board, which is planning to bring at least 75.
Although AIBTM’s final attendee numbers had not been audited by press time, Project Manager Steve Knight says feedback from buyers and exhibitors has been overwhelmingly positive.
“About 40 percent of the [exhibitors] signed next year’s contract on site, which is very high,” Knight says. “That is a big endorsement.”
But challenges remain for hosted-buyer shows, says Steve Hacker, president of the International Association of Exhibitions and Events (IAEE). “It’s a fairly expensive model. You’ve got to bring these people in and put them up and feed them.” Another challenge is getting the hosted buyer/exhibitor match right. “American audiences are far less malleable than European or Asian audiences,” Hacker says. “When an American hosted buyer is assigned exhibitors, in a formalized schedule, [she] is going to demand relevance. The challenge lies in the execution.”
The Motivation Show Strikes Back
IMEX America starts in Las Vegas just a week after the Motivation Show, which runs October 4-6 in Chicago. Also known as IT&ME, it is a more traditional trade show, and although it has added a hosted-buyer component in recent years, the show—the longest running incentive industry trade show—struggles to build excitement.
The Motivation Show is the only industry event to focus on the entire incentive industry and has a large exhibitor section dedicated to merchandise and gift card awards. But it is the travel side that is having trouble gaining traction. As of mid August, the show has not announced any exhibitors from Europe, and only a handful from Latin America, Asia-Pacific, and the Caribbean.
“We expect quite a few more travel exhibitors prior to October,” says Pete Erickson, managing director of the Motivation Show. “Now that the attendance promotion program is underway and registrations are starting to come in, suppliers can see the leading companies that are planning to attend. Once potential exhibitors have an opportunity to see the involvement of the reseller and end-user community, we believe they’ll be there.
“Maritz is sponsoring the conference and presenting a number of sessions,” he continues. “Other incentive companies presenting include Carlson, ITAGroup, MotivAction, USMotivation, Kobie Marketing, Rideau Recognition Solutions, and O.C. Tanner. We’re really excited about the level of involvement we’re seeing from incentive professionals this year.”
Mike Ryan, senior vice president of marketing and strategy for New York-based incentive house Madison Performance Group, is going to the Motivation Show this year but did not attend AIBTM and is not planning to attend IMEX America.
“We don’t really do a lot of shows,” says Ryan. “We tend to go where we can find the buyers as opposed to having the buyers find us.”
But that’s not why Ryan’s going to the Motivation Show, where he will be a speaker. “There is an opportunity and need in our industry to reconnect,” he says. “The Motivation Show, to many of its stakeholders, is more of a social gathering than a buyer gathering. For me, it’s an opportunity to share ideas and insight and, more importantly, get feedback from the audience. And I get to connect with many of the people I am involved with in the industry.”
What’s Next?
The question that remains is whether the market can support the Motivation Show, AIBTM, and IMEX America.
“I don’t think we’re going to end up with three shows in the same marketplace, particularly given the fact that there would be two very similar shows within 30 days of one another,” says Sexton, referring to the fact that IMEX America and the Motivation Show are both in October. “Whether we can support two, that’s a different story.”
Sexton also notes that when IMEX Frankfurt was launched by EIBTM creator Ray Bloom (who sold the show), “everyone was convinced that there would only be one show in Europe that would succeed, and that’s not the case.”
MPI’s MacMillan is even more emphatic. “We saw this [landscape] changing two years ago,” MacMillan says. “We got together and said, ‘The world’s going to change, and before the world changes let’s create something remarkable; the outcome of that was IMEX America.”
For IAEE’s Hacker, though, hosted-buyer shows are an evolution rather than a revolution, and there is “absolutely” room for more traditional trade shows like the Motivation Show. But whether there is room for three major shows, he says, is something “the market is about to tell us.”