Cheryl Geib, National Director of Travel and Meetings at Grant Thornton LLP

Cheryl Geib, national director of travel and meetings at Grant Thornton LLP in Chicago, has been in the meetings/business travel business for 32 years. Geib has seen the industry reach the highest peaks and hit some serious lows during that period, and she took some time recently to talk to Midwest Meetings about how she thinks the industry will emerge from its current problems.

Midwest Meeting: What do you make of the public relations crisis the meetings and convention industry is currently experiencing and how do you think the industry needs to attack it?

Cheryl Geib: I think the bad PR was a typical overreaction fueled by public indignation [to government bailout recipients] and fueled by the press. There’s nothing wrong with incentivizing people and using events for that purpose. In fact, this is exactly the time when companies should be incentivizing. The response has to be at the association level - MPI, NBTA, ACTE. It’s time for them to stop concentrating on planning conferences and instead, reach out to the media, lobby the right congressmen, and start saving this industry.

MM: Obviously the PR issues have compounded the problems the industry faces due to the recession. How well has the industry responded to those financial issues?

CB: The industry has been pretty flexible. You’ve seen individual properties reassessing the way they interact with clients so that they can work with them to save as many face-to-face meetings as possible. If we took every face-to-face meeting out, we’d face a much bigger problem than we face now. It’s to the point now that maybe we just have to wait this out.

MM: What will industry professionals do to survive this?

CB: Certain components of the industry will be able to wait it out and survive - for example, full service hotels that have multiple avenues of income should come out of this better than, say, conference centers, which rely heavily on meetings.

And the market may be a bit oversaturated as far as meeting services are concerned. There are thousands of independent companies out there that are involved in planning meetings – some of these are not going to survive. Then you’ve got a lot of companies that rely on meetings for business - printers, sign makers, production companies. These companies, which have huge investments in equipment and skilled labor, will probably be taking bigger hits.

From our [Grant Thornton] perspective we’re seeing the second half of the year as a period of potential growth. We’ve got our face-to-face meeting programs back on the books. We’ve eliminated some meetings we don’t consider to be mission critical. But training meetings are essential for our firm .We can’t replace them with something like a virtual meeting - they really require one-on-one interaction with instructors and working together with fellow auditors and tax preparers. There’s too much risk for us in not providing the best platform for people to learn.

What I do hear from a lot of my colleagues in the industry is that quite a few are still separate from travel and that creates a lot of inefficiencies and redundancies. So you’re going to see some merging of departments and some staff fallout.

MM: As members of a distinct profession, meeting planners have taken great strides in getting a seat at the corporate table - Do you think that has changed or will change because of the way meetings have taken big financial and PR hits?

CB: I think just the opposite is happening here at Grant Thornton. We are a fairly small department, but very visible and very active. Our department is within finance and procurement, and meetings and travel are combined here, which is a great benefit. I can honestly say we are considered to be contract and risk assessment experts, and that our expertise is relied on. Is that the norm across the industry? I don’t know.

I do know that we’ve been proactive, and fought for a place in our firm. If you’re a meeting planner who has just sat in some backroom with your fingers crossed hoping that everything will turn out - good luck!

MM: So What do you think the future holds for meeting planning as a profession?

CB: That’s a key question, isn’t it?

Here at Grant Thornton, what we’ve tried to do with our planners is develop crossover skills and a depth of knowledge. During the last six months each of our planners has been working on multiple projects in addition to their day-to-day responsibilities. I’ve had one planner doing a vendor analysis, another working with me on a concierge project, and another working on defining virtual meetings and looking at the technology.

Meeting planners are going to have to market their skills in different ways. If you’re a planner and the only thing you’ve been doing is processing banquet event orders and pushing paper between clients and venues, then you’re going to be hard pressed to sell those skills in this marketplace. You’re going to go the way of the travel agent versus “consultant.”

MM: What kinds of skills will be in demand?

CB: Planners who, along with logistical skills, have procurement skills, will be in demand. Or planners who have consulting skills regarding agenda planning. Agenda planning is one of the biggest issues companies struggle with. Trying to effectively reduce a meeting from three days to two is going to be a lot more important than deciding what kind of centerpiece should go on a banquet table.

The trouble is, I think that things are going to be tough in the industry for the next year or two and there’s going to be less of an overall demand for meeting planners. So the industry has to be careful. Once that need for planners has diminished over a period of time, people won’t want to go into the profession anymore, and the quality of what’s available in the marketplace will become questionable.

MM: If potential planners don’t look to meeting planning as a profession, where will they go?

CB: Meeting technology continues to be big. The ability to build strategic meeting management programs with good technology is critical, so anyone who has spent time working to become an expert in some super robust technology will be sought after.

Creative green consulting could be another area as well. Once the economy beings to recover green will move back up as a top corporate priority.

Then there’s virtual meeting planning. I think there are probably only a handful of experts in the country on this subject and that most everybody is flying blind when it comes to virtual meetings. All technologies have their limits - they can be used successfully for some activities, but not for all. They have to be investigated and costed out. Companies would pay a lot of money for the person who can do that. So I think it’s a great opportunity for a new business. If I was laid off tomorrow, that’s what I’d be doing.

MM: What should planners be doing to prepare for the future?

CB: Planners should be asking themselves if they need to get more education. Do they want to expand their knowledge and their comfort base?

They should really be concentrating on expanding their skill set and become more knowledgeable. Instead of trying to find a job as a meeting planner, which may or may not exist, maybe a planner should consider interning in a hotel in order to add some skills they’ll be able to market once the economy does turn around.

And planners are going to have to be prepared to take risks. When we come out of this, things are going to be different. For example, they are going to have to be a lot less dependent on vendors for knowledge. For one thing, lots of vendors aren’t going to be around anymore, so your relationships will change. I know that a lot of planners are afraid of procurement, but they are going to have to have more of a buyer mentality if they are going to be successful.

One of the challenges planners will face is the nature of their relationships with suppliers, and how those relationships affect their jobs. You are going to have to be able to define the difference between a relationship and a partnership. Someone that you know, that’s helped you on a one-shot, one-deal basis, that’s a relationship. Someone you work with that has the same goals as your company, has delivered for you consistently, and can represent your company in the marketplace - that’s a partner, and that’s the person you want “standing beside” you when your CFO asks you why a particular meeting had cost overruns.