Hospitality Performance Network and Meetings International, the soon-to-be former international licensee of site selection firm HelmsBriscoe, late last month announced a joint venture that will launch on March 1.
The agreement gives Scottsdale, Ariz.-based HPN a much broader international presence and provides Meetings International with a North American partner to replace HelmsBriscoe once their 10-year license agreement expires in March.
The combined entity expects to book more than 3,000 meetings annually, totaling more than 650,000 room nights for groups ranging from 25 to 8,000 people, according to the company.
The joint venture will have a combined senior management team, with HPN's Bill Kilburg as chairman and CEO of HPN Global and president and COO Joe Forster keeping the same title with the new company. Meetings International's Ian Quartermaine becomes CEO of international for HPN Global, and Bob Gilbert becomes executive vice president of the joint venture.
Meetings International is a wholly owned subsidiary of Big Sky Group, also run by Gilbert and Quartermaine.
HelmsBriscoe in October announced plans to let its license expire and operate its own brand outside of North America.
"We feel now that we have enough resources and support and enough understanding of the international marketplace that we want to manage the brand directly outside of North America using the same model that we do within North America," said HelmsBriscoe COO Greg Malark. "We will have local leadership globally that will help us take our brand international, which we are, but also be more nuanced based on the needs of the local market."
Meetings International associates from 45 countries have the option of staying with HelmsBriscoe or joining HPN Global. Associates have until March 1 to decide. HPN currently has 110 associates in North America.
Beginning March 1, Meetings International will begin migrating its associates to HPN's proprietary procurement platform. The company also has a centralized procurement team, which handles the contracting for its associates and their clients. According to Quartermaine, as part of the HelmsBriscoe network, associates primarily use the StarCite meetings procurement platform and others use the Cvent system.
HPN primarily serves as a third-party site selection firm and handles some other meetings management functions for its largest clients. According to Kilburg, half of its business is derived from corporations, 35 percent from associations and the remainder from the government.
For at least the first few years of the joint venture, 80 percent of its business will come from North America, Kilburg said.
"When you look at how the business has changed over the last couple of years, the global companies are looking for a global solution," he said. "Almost two years ago, we sat down and said that we want to be a global company. We've begun to move down the path to bring on board the talent internationally that we wanted to have. At the end of the day, for a company holding meetings in China, North America and Europe, if you have a global presence it is obviously much easier to close that deal."
Originally published Dec. 21, 2009