New research by the Global Business Travel Association shows that compliance and cost savings for many of the small meetings companies hold—known as simple meetings—are slipping through the cracks.
Simple meetings—small meetings with basic, replicable requirements—make up half of corporate meetings, yet 52 percent of companies book these meetings outside of “managed” meetings channels, the survey of both GBTA and Meeting Professionals International (MPI) members found.
The survey defined simple meetings as those with between 10 and 50 attendees having the following common characteristics: meeting rooms, optional room nights, basic AV and a formula/format that can be replicated.
A few other findings:
- 70 percent of respondents don’t follow a required bidding process for shopping/booking simple meetings
- When companies don’t use a simple meetings solution, 77 percent search for hotels or venues exclusively through consumer channels
- 52 percent of companies don’t have an e-RFP technology for simple meetings, with no plans to acquire one.
“These lax policies may prevent companies from making the rigorous comparisons needed to realize the full benefits of a managed meetings program, such as better discounts and improved duty of care and compliance with internal policies,” the survey concluded.
In addition, almost three-quarters (72 percent) of respondents do not have key performance indicators in place to measure the success of simple meetings. “Managing spend is only one component of a successful meetings program,” the survey concluded. “It is important to focus on additional metrics such as attendee satisfaction and efficiency of internal processes, which can have a significant long-term impact on a company’s bottom line.”
