As it did with the economy, the September rollercoaster for the financial markets took an immediate toll on the meetings industry—though it was difficult to find planners willing to speak on the record about it.
At Lehman Brothers, a "media blackout" was in force on Sept. 16, the day it announced it was being bought by British bank Barclays. Attempts to contact other financial companies yielded similar results.
Yet indirect evidence of turmoil within the meetings industry abounded. Dawn Penfold, president of the Meeting Candidate Network—a New York City-based job-search firm for meeting planners—said her phone had been "ringing off the hook" with calls from planners who had lost their jobs or were worried about their future. "Many of the planners who have lost their jobs are a bit like deer [caught] in the headlights," she said. "They don't have their resumes or networks up to snuff."
Meanwhile, planners up and down the East Coast said they were already seeing a ripple effect.
"We're very, very nervous about the Wall Street events," said a Washington, DC-based planner who organizes educational and scientific conferences for pharmaceutical firms. No meetings had been canceled, reported the planner—who spoke under the condition of anonymity—but clients were putting the brakes on travel expenses.
"Speakers from Amgen, Pfizer, and other firms have been calling to say they can't speak at our conferences now unless we cover all their expenses," the planner said. "We even had a vice president at Merck tell us he couldn't speak unless we paid for everything, from the moment he left his house until he arrived at our door."
Bill Decker, president and COO of the Hub, a series of off-site corporate meetings facilities in Philadelphia, said the Fortune 500 firms that used his spaces were holding fewer meetings, yet, interestingly, spending more per meeting.
"It's taking about 10 to 15 percent more time to get these meetings approved because they need signoff from multiple levels of senior management, so companies try to do more with fewer meetings," Decker explained. "Often, they're combining two meetings in one, so they have more attendees or meet for an extra day. Or, they might serve a hot lunch since they're not spending those resources on a second meeting."
Michael Toole, event technology manager at the Boston Marriott Newton Hotel in Newton, MA, said many venues in the Boston area had been seeing fewer event sales and bookings due to the burgeoning economic crisis of the past year.
"I expect this to deepen with the Wall Street fallout, but I'm not overly concerned," he added. "Ultimately, meetings and events still need to happen, and we're in a marketplace elastic enough to bounce back quickly." He noted that it took only a year for his previous workplace, the Boston Marriott Copley Place, to recover from the post-9/11 downturn.
"Our current problem may take longer to work itself out, but in the end it's solvable."
Others were less optimistic.
"I fear more bad news is to come," said the Washington, DC-based pharmaceutical planner, noting that his clients begin their 2009 budget planning in October—just on the heels of the fiscal meltdown.
"It's like taking a cue ball and smacking it around the pool table," he said. "It's bound to hit something."
Originally published Oct. 6, 2008