Planners who voiced their No. 1 industry concern in our meetings market survey (March issue) overwhelmingly cited a common challenge: handling rising costs in a seller's market. When we asked a dozen medical meeting planners to share their top issue, I expected to find a common thread among their answers.Not so. They are tackling different challenges on a number of fronts - and finding their own resolutions. Their comments in brief can be found in "Healthcare Meetings: Weathered the Storm, Mounting a Comeback" (p. 50), which diagnoses the health of the industry, thanks to Healthcare Convention and Exhibitors Association's study of more than 15,000 health care meetings over the past 10 years.

According to Jim Donovan, director of the council on ADA (American Dental Association) sessions, the ADA's biggest meeting challenge is understanding attendee behavior. ADA worked with Ethnometrics, which researches attendee behavior by installing cameras throughout the convention center. "Initially, we hired Ethnometrics to measure exhibit hall attendance and traffic patterns," Donovan said. "However, the real benefit of this method of research is observing how an attendee consumes the entire meeting. It allows us to view various components of a meeting after the meeting has concluded. One example of a benchmark we had never even considered is the wait time in our registration line, which we learned by viewing the video is very good, however, the dwell time at the counter has room for improvement. So this year we are making changes to cut the amount of time it takes to register attendees for the meeting and their courses."

Deborah Richardt, director of meeting services for the American Thoracic Society (ATS) cited the Visa process as posing a challenge, since about 40 percent of the meeting's attendees are international delegates. "We have addressed this issue by communicating to international attendees that coming to the United States is not difficult and giving them information very early on regarding the process and what they need to do." She said the ATS has also found it difficult to find venues that have adequate CVBs to help plan the meeting effectively, and has therefore made an effort to educate city officials on the importance of CVB support for meetings.

From the registration counter to local CVBs to international consulates, medical meeting planners are exploring wide-ranging remedies for what ails their meetings.

Michelle Russell
Editor
mrussell@pcma.org