Associations and the city
Defining a new relationship between associations and host destinations
International association meetings have been coveted by those tasked with generating 'business tourism' for years - and the depredations of the coronavirus pandemic will only have increased their attractiveness.
That’s because cities have borne the brunt of measures aimed at curbing Covid-19, and city leaders think business events, and international association events in particular, can play a crucial role in rejuvenating battered local economies.
During successive lockdowns, downtowns from London to New York were abandoned as people worked from home. Ancillary businesses, following orders or just because they found themselves starved of custom, were forced to shut their doors.
Hotels, restaurants, bars, shops, taxi-firms - the types of businesses worst-affected by Covid-19 restrictions - benefit hugely when an international association meeting takes place.
The international nature of these meetings is important.
A survey by destination marketing organisation VisitBritain found that overseas delegates spent far more than their domestic counterparts. Those from outside Europe, for example, spent £1,748 - double the amount spent by those from inside Europe (£990), and five times more than UK delegates (£329).
But there's more to this equation than simply counting the immediate financial return.
Hosting association meetings can boost a city’s prestige and leave a legacy of innovation, research and development, and commercial enterprise that might only come to fruition years down the line.
This, in short, is why association conferences matter to city leaders and why they sometimes offer associations financial incentives – or ‘subventions’ - to secure their business.
The bidding process for these events can be fierce, and, because associations have the final say, it makes sense to think they will emerge from lockdown emboldened to ask for more.
Chloe Menhinick
Chloe Menhinick
Chloe Menhinick, Director of Communications at the International Currency Association, says associations will have ‘greater power’ when dealing with cities, but the picture is nuanced.
“Destinations will be scrambling to rejuvenate their industries and they are going to have to be much more proactive in understanding the needs of associations. Likewise, associations now have an opportunity to really start articulating what their needs are when it comes to events.”
But she says the relationship between associations and cities- specifically the agencies tasked with winning their business - is ‘not as mature as it should be’.
“The truth is a lot of associations don’t really know why convention bureaux exist; they see them as people to facilitate tours of the city! So, yes, I think the power dynamic will move in favour of associations, but I’m not sure how many associations will actually appreciate this opportunity.”
Deep and meaningful
Besides financial support, cities often flaunt their tourism ‘offer’ in bid documents – places of great beauty or cultural and historical interest, for example. This is in the hope that delegates might extend their visit, get to know the area, and bring their families back for a holiday at a later date.
It would be wrong to say this no longer happens, but in recent years, cities have started to shift the focus towards their ‘intellectual capital’, in other words what they can offer associations in terms of access to academia and local business networks that might improve the effectiveness of a meeting.
Aileen Crawford, Head of Glasgow Convention Bureau, expects a more collaborative relationship between city and association will emerge after Covid-19, which should benefit both parties.
“Associations and their members are asking cities to demonstrate their ‘beyond tourism’ attributes; asking for opportunities to engage with local industry and academic institutions to broaden the reach of the association at a local level. The benefits of leaving a conference legacy, in the widest sense, has been a positive development that has brought cities, venues and associations closer together to work in partnership, to help deliver the vision and mission of the association."
Aileen Crawford
Aileen Crawford
BestCities, an alliance of destination marketing organisations, has been pushing for cities and associations to work together to create meetings whose benefits spill out into society at large.
Managing director Lesley Williams said the pandemic had strengthened the case for this approach, even though for associations and destinations the financial returns might be front of mind right now.
“You could argue that in the current situation, that the measurement of bed nights, coffee cups and dinners is one of the most important ones as we deal with the challenges of COVID. But we have to look to the long-term and we must be able to articulate the beyond tourism benefits of business events, the importance of our industry. It’s as relevant and as important now as it’s ever been.”
This thinking doesn’t just go ‘beyond tourism’ but ‘beyond the meeting’.
Menhinick believes a more permanent relationship between associations and cities is starting to emerge. Recently her home city The Hague poached the headquarters of the International Geothermal Association from Bonn, in Germany, after extensive lobbying from business groups and universities in the Dutch city. Does she think this is going to happen more often now?
She says: “I think we are starting to see that evolution - where destinations have been very proactive in capturing the value of an association meeting it has created the opportunity for a much longer relationship. I don’t think it’s necessary for the association HQ to be based in the city for that relationship to be established, although that might be the end of the process. But it’s clear that, where associations want to track and record the impact of their meetings, it will be necessary for them to foster long-term relationships with host cities, who can provide that information.”
Measuring impact
Many people now believe the ability to ‘track and record’ or measure the impact of a meeting is crucial to the long-term survival of the international conference scene, but a report by BestCities, called Advancing Event Legacies through Impact Measurement, showed that legacy measurement was at a very early stage – and, in fact, existed ‘more in aspiration than practical application’.
It found the drive to promote legacy was beset by ‘a lack of evidence to support legacy claims’ and a ‘lack of rigour’ with ‘everyone doing things differently’ and no fixed idea of what legacy meant.
Still, for Williams, the benefits of pursuing the legacy agenda are obvious.
“If we can help destinations and association create and measure legacy, then it will enhance the pace and depth of social transformation. Additional resources are required if we are going to measure legacy effectively, but it has huge potential, particularly for associations. It provides trackable evidence of their worth and the same is true of destinations. If we can measure legacy than we can prove the value of what we are doing to our stakeholders and funders.”
Focus on sustainability
For Menhinick, the idea of capturing the benefits of meetings dovetails with another issue that the pandemic has pushed up the agenda – sustainability; particularly as younger, more environmentally conscious association members begin to find their voice. This, she argues, is something that will affect associations and host cities equally, the former coming under pressure from their membership, the latter facing questions from local communities about the events they host.
“We know that large meetings do spur new ideas that can lead to new technologies, new business opportunities, but no one is measuring it, and if associations and destinations don’t start communicating that, then those questions from millennials, and the local communities, will become louder and louder. Destinations, I think, are going to have to go on the attack and establish a way of measuring those benefits and then communicate that over a long period of time.”
For associations, sustainability will not just be a box to tick, but a positive action.
“To look at the UN sustainable development goals and ask how your meeting is addressing issues of social equity and economic equity gives your event reason, it’s legitimate, it’s validated, and associations need to validate why they are hosting these meetings now more than ever. So, it goes back to thinking about how associations are designing their meetings, the content and the collaborations, and then measuring that long-term. What partnerships are we going to establish with local research institutes? Because I believe the member communities are going to be asking associations to justify why they are hosting meetings more and more and more.”
The shift to virtual
Once deemed an awful lot of hassle, the idea of the hybrid meeting (part face-to-face and part online) has gone mainstream. Many associations now see this format as a long-term option, allowing them to hold smaller in-person events in the ‘host’ city while encouraging far-flung delegates to participate digitally. Other associations are exploring the idea of multi-hub or ‘hub-and-spoke’ meetings where a series of live regional meetings feeds into the main event. Others still see value in running separate complementary live and virtual events – not so much hybrid as ‘both’.
When comparing pre-Covid and post-Covid worlds, Crawford points to the take up of online conferencing that has occurred in the last nine months and observes the, ‘democratising of education brought about by the extensive reach offered by hybrid and virtual conferences.’
“Conferences are the main delivery vehicle for professional education across a variety of sectors,” she says, “yet many organisations and academic institutions find it difficult to send a full team to attend a meeting, due to demands of work, time out of the office, or the cost.“
The advent of virtual and hybrid conferences as a more widely accepted method of delivering education has been seen as a positive membership benefit for associations. The online element brings an opportunity for education to be shared from the few, to the many.”
Angela Guillemet, executive director of INCON Group, an association of professional congress organisers, said the success of online events meant people would be ‘much more selective’ about the meetings they attended and ‘the ones that they wanted to sponsor’.
“With this and sustainability top of mind, I expect that associations will consider hybrid formats with conference hubs connected via live links. Smaller, live meetings held locally will be easier to control and make socially distant while the virus lurks. Tech can connect the hubs and extend the lifecycle of the event. A new professional is emerging from the pandemic, the digital conference organizer, this professional is responsible for the strategic design of a live and digital event, the “phygital” event.”
And so how does a city – with glass and steel infrastructure - respond to that? Speaking in a Joint Meetings Industry Council webinar earlier this year Professor Greg Clarke predicted that Post Covid-19 fewer people would meet in person but many more would meet online.
Greg Clark
Greg Clark
"The critical ingredients are going to be the quality of the conversation that is happening face-to-face by the people who gather and how much that creates the demand for a global audience digitally," he said."
The depth and the meaningfulness of the experience that the people who are connecting have. And the quality of the experience for the digital participants and how much they feel they've had access to some kind of privileged channel that wasn't otherwise available."
He said the ability of host destinations to deliver an omni-channel experience was going to be crucial, but also their ability to 'leverage' the local participants in a way that attracted international visitors.
"This is the critical magnet: can you bring together the world expertise that you have in a particular region on a given subject or bring together the most creative people who provide another reason to be there? It's the ability to leverage not just your institutional assets but your home population and to generate their participation that will create the draw for international participants."
Crawford adds: “The way we engage with associations has had to adapt to the circumstances. In Glasgow, we have had to learn about virtual conferencing and understand the benefits of the hybrid model for our clients. We have had to immerse ourselves in this new technology, so that we can guide our clients to the right partners and solutions that suit their new needs.”
Venues, like the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore and Oslofjord Convention Center in Norway for example, have been quick to convert space into ‘hybrid studios’ - with cameras, LED screens, AV technicians, etc – to serve clients who have had to convert in-person meetings to online. It seems likely that convention centres and hotels will have to invest in new technology and train in-house AV teams to handle an increasingly complex and tech-heavy list of client demands.
If conferences are going to be smaller or less frequent as a result of the take-up of virtual meetings technology during the pandemic, are there more fundamental questions about the relationship between the host destination and the association that need to be answered?
Michel Mol, an Amsterdam-based Futurist, who spoke at the recent BestCities Forum, wondered if it were possible for cities to create standalone virtual brands that had their own value.
“Cities are investing a lot in their virtual brands during the pandemic, but that is in the hope that restrictions are going to be lifted and these places are still top of mind, But a more overarching question might be, is there a value you can capture from a city being a brand purely online? What is the value if people don’t visit it? Look at universities. Most classes are being taught online. So why, as a student based in Amsterdam would I go to university in Amsterdam, when you might as well go to Dublin or Singapore? In this way money can still flow into a city without anyone visiting.”
Similarly, you might ask, what value can a delegate to a hybrid event based in Paris for example, get out of the city without actually visiting it? A virtual tour of the local university perhaps? Online connections to relevant industrial clusters? Or just, maybe, an online wine and cheese tasting?!
Health and safety protocols
Finally, the new normal has been shaped by a pandemic that led to a health crisis that forced governments to lockdown large sections of society. But, while vaccines look promising, we are not out of the woods and it is clear health and safety adds a new dynamic to the association-city relationship. Menhinick believes this, too, is ultimately cause for closer ties.
“Health and safety has become a new issue that associations are going to have to address. If associations want to pull people back to their live events, they have to be ready to engage with the destination and understand what the health and safety protocols are, because that’s going to be absolutely crucial. If associations want to take a proactive approach to health and safety they are going to have to work very closely with the destination.”
Clarke adds: "It's not just the safety that can occur within the convention centre, or the venues, but the safety of the whole travel route to get people to the convention."
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