For meetings and events, the coasts still dominate.

Those of us who have been in the marketing field over the past three or four decades have witnessed some pretty fundamental changes in the role that professional meetings and events play in business.

“Way back when,” national trade shows and professional meetings were one of the most effective ways to interact with industry colleagues. In terms of people gathered together in one place, it was difficult to top trade shows for the convenience of staying in touch on a personal level.

Things are much different now, with advances in communications technology and all. Today, webinars and virtual meetings are on my calendar far more frequently than events where I need to hop a plane to get there.

In-person meetings and events won’t ever go away, of course. There’s really no substitute for real-time pressing the flesh, and it’s still how some of the best business relationships are built and maintained.

This truism is underscored in reporting by Carlson Wagonlit Travel Meetings & Events. The Minneapolis-based firm – part of the Carlson Companies group of hospitality-sector businesses – analyzes proprietary and industry booking data each year to determine which cities are North America’s top locations for meetings and events.

CWT’s 2020 forecast has just been published, and what it shows is that despite the vicissitudes of the business cycle or economic uncertainties, meeting and event activity continues to grow.

And once again, cities on the coasts are the most popular meeting destinations.

As one who lives on the East Coast and who doesn’t particularly relish the idea of flying all the way across the country to attend a 2- or 3-day event, I would have thought that in today’s time-pressed environment, mid-continent locations such as Chicago, New Orleans, Dallas and Houston would be growing in popularity at the expense of East Coast and West Coast destinations.

Moreover, the cost of holding meetings and events in many coastal cities like New York, Boston, DC, LA and San Francisco is measurably higher than many locations in the middle of the continent that are simply more affordable. Surely that must count for something, too.

The Carlson “Top Ten” meeting destination ranking tells us otherwise, however:

#1. New York City

#2. San Francisco

#3. Chicago

#4. Atlanta

#5. Toronto

#6. San Diego

#7. Seattle

#8. Orlando

#9. Dallas-Ft. worth

#10. Las Vegas

Of the Top Ten meeting destination cities, only two could be classified as truly “mid-continent” locations (Chicago and Dallas). And while it’s technically true that Toronto, Atlanta and Las Vegas aren’t “coastal,” they’re far enough east (or west) to make them almost as inconvenient to get to for people traveling from the other side of the country.

Going beyond the factor of travel inconvenience, there’s another issue I’ve had with certain meeting locations. It seem that some are chosen due to their attraction as a recreation destination as much as for their appropriateness for a business event.

For a trade show exhibitor, an event held in Orlando (Disneyworld) or in Las Vegas (The Strip) often has the sorry result of an exhibit hall so empty that you can roll a bowling ball down the aisle and have it pick up speed. (And it isn’t just on the final day of the show.)

It may be a minority view, but speaking personally, give me more meetings in plain-Jane Chicago, Kansas City or St. Louis than in sunny California or Nevada. My travel time is more precious than that.

Click here to access more information from the most recent Carlson Wagonlit trends report.

One thought on “For meetings and events, the coasts still dominate.”

Every January, San Francisco’s Union Square is lined at high noon with people in suits looking down at their phones, facing our weak winter sun like grackles on a power line in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. It’s the Morgan Stanley conference of international finance.

They stand out. Suits have disappeared here. San Francisco is still small enough for visiting name-tag hordes to change its face. Some large group is always in town.

The appeal of conventions, of course, is a vacation-like promise of exotic change: meeting in a distant place with good weather, beauty, and a sense of importance. SF is distant, beautiful and “important”. San Diego has the best weather. Conventioneers want to be pampered.

You can go down the list. Each city features something to stimulate the psyche in a major way and make you feel like a liberated master of the universe. Whether this results in better work product is debatable. But distance, itself, is surely part of the appeal.

This may explain why we don’t meet up in Indianapolis in winter.

Steven Kruger says:

September 11, 2019 at 4:34 pm

Every January, San Francisco’s Union Square is lined at high noon with people in suits looking down at their phones, facing our weak winter sun like grackles on a power line in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. It’s the Morgan Stanley conference of international finance.

They stand out. Suits have disappeared here. San Francisco is still small enough for visiting name-tag hordes to change its face. Some large group is always in town.

The appeal of conventions, of course, is a vacation-like promise of exotic change: meeting in a distant place with good weather, beauty, and a sense of importance. SF is distant, beautiful and “important”. San Diego has the best weather. Conventioneers want to be pampered.

You can go down the list. Each city features something to stimulate the psyche in a major way and make you feel like a liberated master of the universe. Whether this results in better work product is debatable. But distance, itself, is surely part of the appeal.

This may explain why we don’t meet up in Indianapolis in winter.