Our International Roundtable: Getting Past Perception

In March, Successful Meetings conducted a roundtable of meeting owners and tourism board executives at Successful Meetings University International in New York City. The group met to discuss risk management issues surrounding international meetings and incentives and to brainstorm solutions with one another and with the help of brand management expert Keith Turco, president of Gyro Advertising – New York. 

Here’s what they had to say about three primary issues. 

Successful Meetings: What are the most important value propositions you look for during the site selection process? 

 

Sara Leonard: I would say safety and security.

Janet Dunlap: Yes, that the attendees feel safe to travel to the destination. Crime is a big issue with many attendees, as well as with the upper management of the host organizations.

William Vendl: With high-end corporations, you need to be sure of safety and security. When I met Claudia [Davila] at a travel trade show three months ago, my perception of Colombia was kidnappings, drugs, and shootings. 

I asked her point blank: What’s happening? She told me my perception was 10 years out of date and she invited me to come down and take a look. I expected to get the beach resorts and all the frou frou kind of stuff that tourists would do. Instead, the first place they took us to was the slum area of Medellin and we spent most of the day looking at what the government had done to revitalize the area. 

I was totally blown away. First, by the fact that they would even take us there and then second, to see what the government has done.

Then we did go to Cartagena and we had the traditional site inspection. But to have enough nerve to take us down there told me that Claudia was telling me the truth. It is safe and it is secure. We saw people out walking the streets without hesitation at two o’clock in the morning. It gave me the confidence to go back to my high-end clients and recommend the destination. We now have two groups that are going there.

Successful Meetings: Can a destination that has a safety misperception problem leverage the positive experience of one planner on a site visit to sell the destination to other planners and help them sell it to their attendees?  

Keith Turco: Testimonials can be powerful branding tools — especially if they address sensitive issues as well as support the overall brand message. It’s important to leverage the testimonials that come from successful site inspections as much as possible. In this type of situation the goal needs to be focused on educating the marketplace, not just reinforcing the talking points of the brand message.

Claudia Davila: Every interaction that I have with a potential client has a strong educational element. I like to start presentations by asking the audience what they know about Colombia and then address the safety and security misperceptions as they come up. 

Debra Signer: It also depends on the type of group. For an incentive group, security means one thing. For an educational event it can mean something very different. I do scientific meetings, so infrastructure is a security issue. When I think about Colombia, my concern is whether or not the properties can handle government-secured documents. 

Successful Meetings: How does the news cycle in the United States change the equation in terms of how you present certain destinations to upper management or to your attendees?

Doug Wheeler: In our company, and I hate to say this, Mexico is taboo right now because of the overblown media coverage of the drug violence. And that makes the security situation the key issue that needs to be addressed rather than the great facilities, activities, and other experiences to be had. 

You need to focus first on what’s going on in the community, what you’re doing with security, what’s really going on there. That’s the critical communication that has to occur.

Successful Meetings: Eduardo, you do that when you’re dealing face-to-face with a potential client or clients, but is there a part of your marketing strategy that deals with that on a macro level?

Eduardo Chaillo: Of course we have problems, but the problems are blown out of proportion and presented out of context when you see them depicted in the media. So our strategy has been changing a little bit from traditional advertising to a communications strategy.

First of all, we are being very honest and open about what’s really happening in Mexico — where the problems are — and we’re pushing out a lot of maps and statistics that educate potential clients on how far the danger spots are from our meetings destinations.

Gloria Saponaro: That’s why site inspections are so important. We need to check it out not only to be prepared for problems that may arise on site, but also to be able to talk about the destination knowledgeably to upper management in the first place. 

Davila: That’s right, it’s hard to combat the impact of coverage on CNN with a brochure. The planner needs to be able to say with authority that they know what it’s really like at a destination. 

Successful Meetings: It seems that the U.S. market is a little more sensitive to media coverage and travel warnings than other countries. Is there a way to counteract that?

Chris Lynn: It can take many years to overcome a misperception built up by the media, but some quick wins can also help in building relationships. You know, for example, that London was not renowned for being a food capital, but then in 2004 we were named gourmet capital of the world by Gourmet magazine and that age-old perception began to change. 

Gil Cardon: Of course, we had to respond to both U.S. State Department warnings and the media spotlight in the months following the [March 11, 2011] tsunami and the nuclear power plant tragedy. Initially, there was a 50-mile radius that was restricted around the Fukushima plant. That was finally reduced to 13 miles and it was crucial for us to get the word out that the rest of Japan was a safe place to bring meetings. 

We’ve been organizing fam trips to show planners first-hand that Japan is functioning normally. But it’s still that very limited area that the media focuses on — and that makes it difficult. 

Successful Meetings: Is there a way to bring the difficulties of America as a market into the conversation with meeting owners? 

Turco: As tough as Americans are from a site-selection perspective, they’re also very practical people. So, if the benefits of a destination outweigh the risks, it’s not that big of a sell. 

It comes down to communication. Tourist boards need to convey the passion that they have for their destinations and provide the planners with the tools they can use to sell the destination and dispel any of the negative perception that’s out there. 

Successful Meetings: How important is the culture of a destination in terms of selling it to an attendee base and to upper management?  

Signer: It’s very important. There is a universal desire to find experiences that are new and different. 

Turco: That’s right. It’s meeting a primal need of the target audience. It’s about focusing on the experience of the attendee.

Vendl: That’s true with incentives in particular. Year after year, you see the same faces making up 20 percent of the group. But the other 80 percent is made up of people for whom this is the only award they’ve ever won. So, it’s important to have a good destination with some type of cultural component that they can relate to.

Carmen Laborin: For Mexico I think it’s much easier to create that kind of experience because we’re so close to the States. Most Americans can relate to a Mexican experience because each culture has crossed the border of the other to a certain degree.  

Successful Meetings: How about long-haul destinations like New Zealand where English is spoken — can the cultural differences be enough to trump the distance and the familiarity?

Steven Dixon: Good question. I think if we compare New Zealand to other long-haul destinations in terms of accessibility, we would call ourselves “accessibly remote” perhaps. And that works to our advantage. It makes us a place that’s on everyone’s bucket list. 

When I get in front of potential clients I educate them on how it actually isn’t that far to go. It’s not four days to get there. It is a 12-hour flight. It’s a movie, a meal, a nap, and you wake up and have breakfast, and you’re there. 

Anna Mann: You don’t find that kind of nature and scenery anywhere else in the world. New Zealand is like an adult playground — [for example] Queenstown with the jet boating and the river rafting and the bungee jumping: You name it in terms of outdoor sport; they’ve got it.