The Way forward for Conferences Worth and Engagement

BCD Meetings & Events rolled out a three-year strategic plan last month that centers around attendee experience, engagement and providing streamlined meetings processes and intelligence. BTN editorial director Elizabeth West sat down with BCD M&E president Bruce Morgan. An edited transcript follows.

BTN: Give me the picture of meetings and events in terms of
growth over 2019, and how is that different from your colleagues on the
transient side of the business?

Bruce Morgan: If we look back to 2019 and we look at the transient travel
of corporate travel components that BCD versus BCD M&E and the business
that we’re in, you know we’re in a situation where I think most corporate
corporations and you know most TMC would say you know volumes are not back to
2019 levels whereas in our space in the M&E space our volumes are greater
than 2019. And so the bottom line is, so in any metric, whether it’s number of
meetings managed or events managed, whether that’s revenues, whatever the case
may be, in every metric there outperforming 2019, I don’t think that’s unique
to BCD M&E to be clear.

BTN: Outperforming by how much?

Morgan: We’re a private organization, so we don’t publicly disclose.
But if I were to use a general percentage… benchmarking against 2019, I would
say in 2023 we were up in a lot of metrics, 20 percent or higher.

BTN: Focusing specifically on meetings management, which is
key to BTN’s audience, what kind of activity are you seeing?

Morgan: The meetings management space is a big, big focus and at the
end of the day for corporations, it’s a lot of spend. It’s oftentimes very tied
to their corporate travel relationships… but we are seeing people come to bid
proactively and, honestly, some are looking to renew and aggressively
renegotiate in regards to their relationship.

BTN: How do you see companies investing in meetings and in
service partners like yourself?

Morgan: That investment sometimes comes at the cost of other
expenses. If the inflationary costs of holding a meeting today is X percent
over [a previous year], they’re not necessarily adding the budget. Our recent
client survey [showed]… thirty-three percent of respondents see an increase in
full year 2024 budgeting, 42 expected a flat budget compared to the prior year
and 18 percent expected decrease. So they are having to choose what matters in
terms of getting the return on their investment.

BTN: And how do you see your clients making decisions about
what’s important, and then allocating the investment accordingly?

Morgan: We’re counseling on whether it’s Return on Experience or
Return on Investment or Return on Opportunity. We are giving clients [event]
data they can use within their marketing mix just like they were with
advertising, but saying “based on bringing these people together, we can track
back to product,” whether that’s product sales, channel engagement, etc.

BTN: What about internal meetings, where the objective is more
about driving connections and company culture?

Morgan: What it takes to engage an audience is also changing rapidly,
so that measurement piece becomes even more important, especially with new
generations in the workforce. We have the ability to measure the in-room experience
from a meeting by looking at reactions and facial recognition [and using that]
to rank your content in real time, rather than collecting pre- and post-event
data, which is something that was done for a long time but is now sort of a
dated methodology.

BTN: How would you characterize the use of this type of data collection
and analysis versus five years ago?

Morgan: We are seeing customers absolutely use it. I would say it’s
a sea change, honestly, from what we might see in 2019. But I would even say in
the past 24 months, it’s a sea change.

BTN: How are companies justifying meetings now—aside from
money spent. Given the ability to work virtually in many cases, what is the value
the host organization needs to prove to the attendee?

Morgan: When it comes to the meeting participant—not the host
organization, but the individual—the tolerance for getting on a plane and taking
time away from their work… they really have to decide if it’s going to be worth
it. People have figured out how to share content remotely, they’ve figured out
how to drop a business plan or engage the customer remotely. They are good at
that now. Now, they are looking for the value of the connection, the value of
workplace loyalty and being a part of that culture. And they look at meeting
attendance as a choice. That puts more pressure on every part of the ecosystem
to drive a high-value rationale for getting together.

BTN: BCD Meetings & Events announced in May that it had
embarked on a three-year strategic plan. It seems to me that a lot of that plan
speaks to the attendee experience vis-à-vis, your last comment about the value
of connection and shared experience.

Morgan: We’re treating 2024 as as as we publicly call it, a
foundational year, right when you have that kind of growth and rebound and so
forth, we’ve gotta make sure that all of our investments, all of our talent,
which is our biggest asset we have is in a good position for continued growth
in 2025 and beyond.

We’ve developed our Films product that is around content
creation and engagement, and we think that’s an area within content where our
people provide creativity and value to our customers. So that’s going to be a
big focus for us.

But it’s also in the data that we talk about before. The
ability to access data and understand it quickly. The dirty little secret of
the meetings and events business is that it remains a highly manual industry.
It drives customers crazy. And maybe you’d say, “good for you because you’re an
agency and, therefore, you can charge for your time.”  But the reality is we should be working
together when we see opportunities to streamline the business process and the
manual aspect of our business, we should be leaning in and embracing that.

There are a lot of components that are decades behind, for
example, the automation that exists in the corporate travel space. What’s great
is there are a lot of players anxious to jump into that pool and we welcome
them all because yes, we’re focused on the experience and engagement and and
the attendee and their experience, and not just bridging gaps that come from
not having automated processes. We want our employees to think creatively for
our customers and deliver a service. And we’re not unique like this … there’s a
huge opportunity for automation across our industry.

BTN: There’s a lot of M&E activity in the agency space
right now. Do you have acquisition targets as you see your competition likely
getting very big?

Morgan: That’s not our focus in 2024 but watch this space. I’m
charged with growing the organization. Our three-year plan is not about
achieving a number. It’s about mindful growth, the growth of our employee base,
the expansion of our services.

I have a ton of respect for CWT and Amex GBT. A merger like
this shows the marketplace is interested in investing, and that’s great. We
compete with CWT and Amex GBT more in the meetings management space than some
of the other areas, and I am sure we will continue to compete and we welcome
the opportunity. We’re always going to be focused on delivering value to our customers.
Do we see opportunities that could filter out from a merger like this?
Certainly. But I’m pretty sure my colleagues at those organizations also see opportunity.
BCD M&E knows who we are as an organization and we show up every day for
our clients.