Impacting the Bottom Line:
The Role Meetings and Planners Play in Driving Strategic Business Results

A great reason to join....

Meetings are both a main revenue generator for associations and a primary opportunity for members to meet and network with each other. Their importance to associations cannot be undervalued. As such, association meeting planners increasingly understand that they need to become much more strategic as the importance of the role they play in their association’s future has significantly increased

PCMA survey reports events generate 40 percent of association revenue.

Conferences, meetings and trade shows are important revenue generators for associations, generating an average of 40 percent of an association's revenue, according to the 2005 Association CEO Survey, conducted by the Professional Convention Management Association's (PCMA) Education Foundation. Nearly 30 cents of every revenue dollar comes, on average, from conferences and meetings and nearly 12 cents of every revenue dollar comes from trade shows. Associations hold an average of 15.9 meetings and events annually.

Meeting planning is second only to executive management as a key task of associations. Meetings and events were ranked as “important” or “very important” by 96.7 percent of association CEOs – ahead of other tasks such as education, communications, publications and legislative affairs.

Association CEOs ranked meeting logistics and coordination, budgeting and financial management, contract negotiation and leadership as the most important skills for a senior meeting planner.

The survey, conducted by Association Research Inc., was conducted in 2004 and received responses from 269 association CEOs. A copy of the survey will be available on PCMA's Web site.

Group business accounts for 36.9 percent of all hotel industry operating revenue. Most importantly, association-sponsored events account for 67.8 percent of total industry spending.

About PCMA Members

PCMA member associations book more than 300,000 meetings per year. Their average annual convention budget is $1.49 million. Member associations stage 2.5 exhibit events annually. The average square footage of their largest events is 98,750 square feet. Attendance at members’ citywide conventions is 6,385. PCMA member associations sponsor 30 “small” meetings (150 rooms or less) each year. More than half (59%) of PCMA member associations have held meetings outside the United States.

Among its major findings: Direct spending on meetings, conventions, expositions, and incentive travel exceeds $100 billion. Taken as a whole, the industry is the 22nd largest contributor to the gross national product, larger than such industries as printing & publishing and trucking & warehousing.

The Convention Industry Council’s Economic Impact Study is the most comprehensive survey of the conventions, meetings, and expositions industry.

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