Got one hundred and one tasks to do and can’t find the time to complete any? Then book a meeting with yourself. That’s the advice from Gina Trapani, author of productivity self-help book Upgrade Your Life.

Trapani cites US research which estimates the annual cost of unnecessary interruptions at work at $650bn. She reckons that the brain needs 15 minutes of uninterrupted time to ‘get in the zone’, become truly focused and do one's best work. But how is this possible with so many distractions these days?

Actually, you just ignore them. There’s no need to feel guilty about not instantly answering an email or returning a call, she says: “If you jump every time your phone rings, a new email arrives, your Blackberry buzzes or someone stops by your desk, you're undermining your most important work and costing your company money.”

According to Trapani, we should practice the art of ‘time blocking’ by booking out an hour in our work calendars to have a meeting with ourselves. The meeting should take place in a conference room with only the material needed for the task at hand. That means no Outlook and no mobiles – cold turkey for Crackberry addicts.

The process works best if you have a single project to complete which requires deep engagement such as writing, brainstorming or number-crunching. I think the idea is genius but unfortunately for the editorial team we are always mid-way through constructing the latest breaking news story, so unless we block out eight-hour self-meetings we’ll just have to make the most of multi-tasking!

On how many occasions do you find yourself seated in rows with hundreds of other people, watching images on a screen with the expectation you will empathise and learn from those up the front and take away something memorable? At a conference, yes. But also at a movie theatre, says Steve de Wit, presenter at MPI’s Meetings and Events Conference in Malaga and author of the book ‘Secrets of Effective M&E’. As a meeting planner, a meeting is effective if both logistics and content are goal driven, have the appropriate format and are correctly operated, de Wit posits.

Perhaps it’s the after-glow of the Oscars, but de Wit’s analogy of a movie theatre, made at MPI’s EMEC, makes sense. A movie director plays to emotion, entertains and sets a scene, as well as telling a story. Hence de Wit believes conferences should be on longer stages, or the long side of a rectangular room for a wide-screen effect. There should be music to add variation, decent chairs, good acoustics. There should be no middle aisle (“why give away the best seats in the house?”) and there should be top notch technology and lighting. A 21st century meeting room should be as simple as possible, therefore easy to dress or brand, and the ceiling high, so you can build in it.

He bemoans the practice of selling rooms using charts showing how many chairs can be crammed into a room – it’s no longer valid. “We want to move the chairs, take up space, move around afterwards,” he adds. de Wit made his point by getting delegates at the EMEC conference to sit in standard rows set up at the back of the meeting room, without raking, one behind the other. Only four rows back the seated delegates have already had their view limited to 20 per cent of the screen unless they move their heads or bodies.

Admittedly, the majority of our speakers/CEOs are not Angelina Jolie or George Clooney, so the idea of seeing them in widescreen high definition technicolour may not appeal to all. But de Wit does have a point about optimising events space – if you’re going to sit people theatre-style, why not make it an experience like a theatre? For those who would have trouble marrying the concept of entertainment set-up with business values, de Wit is not all about show: “For a corporate, the meeting is effective if it creates the desired positive and lasting results. For a participant the meeting is effective if he or she will master and apply the newly acquired value.”

All we need now is to get hotels to build high-ceilinged, high-tech rooms (optional natural daylight probably a plus) and we can roll out the red carpet.

The old-fashioned conference is dead. At least, it soon will be, if the Danes are to be believed.

More than 10 years ago, my old friend Lars Blicher Hansen invited me to structure and chair a conference for the members of Wonderful Copenhagen Convention Bureau. What he wanted me to do was plan a day that broke with convention – where seating layout constantly changed, where delegates didn’t only listen but also participated and where they were encouraged to move around. He wanted an interactive day with energy and involvement. So I created a seminar broken into bite-sized chunks, with delegates working in teams on projects in different spaces and then feeding back results to their peers in a competitive environment.

They worked indoors and outside in the sunshine; they worked sitting down but they also worked standing up. They also found the room layout constantly changing. Every time they returned from working outside, we changed the seating plan – the last session was set out as a debating chamber with two banks of seats facing each other.

I was really making it up as I went along, with Lars guiding me. What I didn’t know was that Lars was planning to develop this thinking in the way he has. This is now a subject that has been explored in great depth in Denmark for several years and we have reported on this occasionally in our series of features in M&IT magazine called ‘Anatomy of a meeting’.

The Danes have focused on the physical set-up of the room - seating, colours, temperature and air quality - even odour. All these things are hugely important to delegate physiology, response and quality of the delegate’s opportunity to learn.

They are trying to persuade the rest of us to recognise that the old schoolroom-style speaker-facing-the-audience system is tedious and ineffective as a teaching medium. At the European Meetings & Events Conference last week in Malaga, they tried to demonstrate their thinking in a session by inviting delegates to design a physically ‘different’ environment in a conference room in the Palacio de Congresos. The room had a few different types of seats in it and a few props, but without a really big supply of both, it couldn’t really work. But the theory was good and Bo Kruger of Moving Minds and Ann Hansen of MeetOvation got their messages across well, such as: “Movement helps us concentrate, keeps up the energy and creates engagement. Movement releases endorphins and makes you happier. But most of us sit still at conferences. If you sit for 12 minutes the heart rate slows down and so does the brain.”

Aye to that! Bo and Ann were trying to demonstrate that a more thoughtful approach to the physical layout of the room will improve results and thus the return on investment. The trouble is, how are we to create fresh meeting environments with new interactive energy when all the meeting rooms look the same, the furniture is cheap and in short supply and all of the same kind? Hotels have no space to store a choice of seating and carry precious little in the way of in-house hardware for the same reason.

Will the dedicated conference centres grasp the nettle and take a more radical approach to room layout and design by investing in a wider choice of seating, tables and other furniture?

In this climate? I doubt it. The Danes may have to wait awhile before they break the mould.

“Bigger than Marmite and cooler than Prada,” boasted Josephine Fairley, co-founder of Green & Black’s, talking about the company that she sold to Cadbury’s for £20m in 2005.

Fairley was one of the keynote speakers at London industry trade show Confex. Available as a speaker for corporate events, Fairley was there to tell her not really rags to impressive riches story. She is not a sparkling public speaker but she is very easy to listen to and her product is one familiar to most of us. It’s also a great excuse to leave bars of chocolates on all the chairs before the delegates arrive, which just about guarantees she gets everyone’s attention.

Fairley speaks openly about the ups and downs of trying to establish a business and readily recognises that she was lucky to have been bailed out when necessary with working capital from the bank, who could see she was on to a good thing. Unlikely to happen to budding entrepreneurs today, she recognises. Still, she suffered plenty of sleepless nights and has written a book, ‘Sweet dreams’, about the rollercoaster ride.

Fairley readily recognises that a large part of her success came from having a great product. Green & Black’s is now the largest selling organic chocolate in America – although interestingly they had never heard of it in Lyon when I was there recently. I suspect that tells us more about the quality of the chocolate already available in France, than Green & Black’s marketing.

Fairley opened her speech with the admission “I am a chocoholic” and that she is and was absolutely passionate about the taste. She is equally passionate about its ethical and organic credentials, which, she says, makes it “guilt-free chocolate; well, almost". And that surely is the holy grail.

Her talk was full of platitudes but the sort that are no less true for appearing banal: “If you don’t do it, you never know what might have happened if you had done it.” And “Luck is what you have left over when you’ve given 100 per cent.” My favourite: “People tend to focus on the urgent and not the important.”

But it is easy to sit back and judge what looks like an easy ride to success. It wasn’t, clearly, or it would have been done before. Probably the most useful points she urged her audience to take away – or that part of her audience trying to run a business – were twofold: customer service is the lifeblood of a company and she was completely obsessed by getting it right. And, secondly, the importance of harnessing the power of the media and getting good publicity. Fairley had been a journalist so is familiar with the way to garner the attention of journalists – once again, not rocket science, she just made sure all the ones important in her markets received loads of chocolate and understood the ethical arrangements behind it. Incorruptible we members of the press may be but chocolate… well, that’s different isn’t it? Needless to say the combination of organic, ethical, great tasting chocolate was irresistible and the brand received the sort of publicity even the large multinationals couldn’t pay for.

Fairley was lucky too to have been mentored by hugely successful businesswoman Anita Roddick, herself on a similar mission but with beauty products, and she even received advice from the first self-made female billionaire Martha Stewart.

For the right audience, while Fairley won’t set the room alight, she talks candidly about an extraordinary business success story – and she can even help give advice on an exit strategy. Although in the current climate that is most likely to be, 'wait a little while'…

To me, there’s nothing quite as cringe-worthy as an enforced public sing-along. So when SongDivision took to the stage for a post-lunch ‘rock’n roll conference energizer’ at MPI’s European Meetings and Events Conference, it would be an understatement to say that I was sceptical.

Having been wined and dined by host city Malaga, delegates trooped into the auditorium, sleepy and sated, to be told that we were going to compose a conference song! My heart would have sunk if my stomach hadn't been so full. We were introduced to the band, a chirpy, gigging muso bunch of guys and girls who have played with Queen, Bono, Take That etc. They began playing, rather brilliantly, so when they said ‘Now it’s your turn!’ I did rather feel like saying ‘No, please, as you were, I was enjoying that.’

But with an audience member showing his chops on the guitar, we had some starting chords and it was on to the lyric writing. You’d think, as a creative industry, we’d be good at this, and sure enough the less shy and retiring types were soon storming the stage with their contributions. To be honest, it looked wobbly from the start. Our chorus was to include the key conference theme: ‘the future is our canvas, let’s create it together’ and we were to provide the rest. After a few teenage-girl-poetry clangers (‘let’s flock together, like birds of a feather’), we settled on ‘let’s rock the world and make it last forever’ (admittedly, not a vast improvement). The verses were notable for some clever twists (rhyming espresso and Picasso) and some clichés not worth repeating, though dubious rhyme of the day went to 'Enjoy beautiful Malaga, with ladies short and talllaga'. Ahem.

Once we had sifted through the words, the musicians improvised a tune on the spot and with nary a bar of rehearsal, away we went into full song, complete with guitar solo. Full credit to the exceptionally talented musicians, though with lyrics like that, the old saying ‘you can’t polish a turd’ did spring to mind. I could have done without MC Paul Bridle putting his tie around his head and ‘shredding’ the guitar and, no matter how you try, it’s not likely I will ever be coerced into shouting out “MPI!” with the suggested accompanying fist-pumping action. But, blow me down, even this hardened cynic was beaming by the end of it. It was fun. And one hour later a few hundred people walked out genuinely energised into the next afternoon session. There’s something to be said about the primal nature of music for pepping people up and no better time at conference than that slothful post-lunch slot.

If I never hear the MPI song again I won’t be too worried. (Oddly enough, just writing about it has made it stick in my head. Good song? Maybe not. Memorable? Most definitely.) But against all expectations, I do hope that my path crosses with SongDivision again. Encore.

The humble biscuit has been on the receiving end of much bad press of late.

Viewers of BBC’s Breakfast programme on Monday morning will have heard about one of Leeds Council’s potential cost cutting initiatives - banning biscuits from meetings.

And in the run up to what is being billed as the ‘Mumsnet’ election as the political parties from all persuasions woo female voters via social networking sites, Gordon Brown got a dunking in October when he failed to answer the jovial aside ‘What’s your favourite biscuit?’ posed during an on-line webchat.

Mumsnet visitors were left guessing and speculation was rife with Nice and Garibaldi becoming the most suggested PM’s faves by the online community. Eventually, Brown crumbled, giving the rather half-baked answer that he preferred ‘chocolate biscuits but was trying to cut down.’

It might sound trivial, but, according to the Mumsnet, you can tell a lot about a person from their favourite biscuit. If you look up the name “Gordon” on the site, you will find he is most likely to shop at Co-op, wear Burton and overwhelmingly prefers rich tea fingers. On the other side of the Commons, "David" is most likely to shop at Waitrose, wear Paul Smith and partake in a veritable selection box of biscuits from Duchy Originals to custard creams.

It’s something I’ve been trying to inwardly digest…what does the choice of biscuits say about the meetings I’ve been too? Nowadays the tables at the breakouts are definitely out to impress me - groaning under the weight of plate-sized cookies resplendent with chocolate chips of all different colours and rough-round-the-edges shortcakes that scream ‘look at me, I’m lovingly home-made.’ Personally, though, I’d rather have fruit.

In a previous life on local rags I was once offered pink wafers, fruit shortcakes and jam rings when I went for a meeting with the local NHS Trust bosses. The PA who organised this meeting of minds said the biscuits were only wheeled out for meetings with the chief exec, just to make me feel extra privileged.

Perhaps Leeds Council made the right decision. Not only are they a cost to the bottom line (not to mention the tummy, hip and thigh line) but biscuit choice can be a political minefield. Brown’s reticence to reveal his favourite tea break snack may have been a way of concealing the true nature of his much publicised flawed personality.

If biscuits maketh the man (or woman) what does my choice say about me? Exotic triple-choc layered flash-in-the-pan creations do not have me reaching for the plate, neither do the stylish monochrome looks of the Oreo Cookie. Give me a fig roll, garibaldi, malted milk or ginger nut anyday…

One benefit to come out of the credit crunch for venues has been the increase in creative marketing and the diversification that has opened up new revenue streams, but Dolce Hotels & Resorts is possibly taking things a bit too far in its bid to turn delegates into leisure guests.

The chain, which has six properties in Europe, is targeting business travellers with the launch of a new ‘leisure pack’, accompanied by ‘an innovative yet disruptive in-hotel guerrilla marketing campaign’.

When they say ‘disruptive’, what they intend to do is go into delegate’s bedrooms and leave ‘lipstick style’ reminder messages about leisure breaks on bathroom mirrors (perhaps ‘I know what you’re going to do this summer??’), then they’re going to pop back later, when you’re out, and put post-it notes on your bed’s headboard. If that’s not enough to make you realise Dolce Hotels are ideal for a relaxing holiday, the marketing team will leave subliminal messages in your meeting room, which will convince you to book, but you’ll think it was all your idea. Clever, eh?

They do stop short, however, at drugging you and chaining you up in the spa to experience the leisure facilities.

Dolce’s PR and marketing director, Xavier Louyot, reckons business guests will be won over by the ‘humoristic and inspiring’ campaign. I fear business guests might just want to get down to business without being ‘disrupted’ by over-enthusiastic marketeers every five minutes, but perhaps that’s why I went into journalism and not PR?

Last week’s M&IT Industry Awards Dinner was the last one (for the time being) scheduled to take place at The Novotel London West. Next year’s dinner will be held at The Park Plaza Westminster Bridge, which opens its doors next month.

But before we bid adieu to the guys from Novotel, it’s worth focusing on why we were at the Novotel for the past four years. It was because of the deal they gave us, because they provide fantastic meeting space, superb food quality and excellent service.

The Novotel knows that because it is located out at Hammersmith in West London, it has to try harder. And it does. That’s why it attracts a lot of meetings business.

Our event is a charity fund-raising dinner – this year it raised £52,000 for Save The Children – so we don’t want to spend top dollar. We try to create a high quality event while keeping costs down to maximise the contribution to the charity. So Park Lane hotels haven’t been on the agenda in recent years – mostly because of their high corkage charges but also because Park Lane hotels’ costs in general are high for charity events.

But the Novotel’s flexible approach to pricing has been responsible for a large slice of our fund-raising (we have raised more than £750,000 for Save The Children), so before we move on, it’s appropriate to recognise that fact and thank GM Michael Sloan and his team for taking such good care of us during our stay at his hotel. He may view the arrival of the new Park Plaza with less enthusiasm than event organisers but for the market, the arrival of the new 1000-delegate ballroom in the Park Plaza Westminster Bridge is great news.

It will unlock the grip on the market of a handful of hotels and create more choice for organisers of big events like ours. And it might also persuade some venues to be more flexible in their pricing when dealing with charity fund-raisers.

“Who?” said one of the younger female guests on my table at the M&IT Industry Awards, as star speaker Sir Geoff Hurst MBE got up to welcome us all to the evening. “He’s second only in popularity to the Pope,” came the quick riposte from another event organiser sitting close by. (Luckily a nine-year-old boy had filled me in that morning on the hero status of England’s triple-goal scorer from that legendary World Cup of 1966. So it’s not an age divide, but it may be a gender one.)

Staying with the football theme, the astonishing football skills of Expansion Team were appreciated by both sexes. Meanwhile the awards welcomed its first female host in years, BBC journalist Kate Silverton, who impressed many by happily mixing with guests during the drinks reception and joining others in the bar after the formalities were over.

The band, Soul UTD, were also fantastic and kept many of us on the dance-floor till an hour that’s just not sensible on the night before the opening of Confex. But besides the great food, entertainment and company, what really made the night was the £52k raised for Save the Children from a table raffle and online auction.

It's always a challenge to get an audience to dig deeply in to their pockets without ruining their evening entirely by showing films of starving children. Holby City’s Amanda Mealing was Save the Children’s representative at the event for the second year last night and she is a polished act, which helps. But the film accompanying this section of the evening focuses on the life-changing and life-saving projects that can be achieved with really very little cash. And although it always makes me cry, it feels like the right amount of conscience-badgering. Thanks to the generosity of the guests, an ambulance will now be bought and run for a community in Ethiopia, where it is much needed and will undoubtedly save lives. A meaningful chunk of this money came from Motivcom’s Nigel Cooper, who bid £5,000 for a 1966 World Cup ticket donated by M&IT’s managing editor Martin Lewis and an England shirt signed by Geoff Hurst.

Male or female, football fan or not, we can all take our hats off to the beautiful game for helping make an awards evening very special.

Somewhere in London, an empire founded on branded pens is gaining power. Fascinated by destination brochures, memory sticks and fuelled by on-stand chocolates and plastic glasses of wine, a small but irritating group of people have been adding to their mountainous piles of ‘show swag’, while no doubt proving the bane of serious stand holders. Most recently, International Confex suffered from a handful of so-called ‘trolley people’, roaming the buzzing aisles amongst the genuine buyers, stilt walkers and barely-dressed showgirls, preying on the largesse of exhibitors.

While they are fairly visible at most trade shows, it must be extraordinarily frustrating for exhibitors, who have heavily invested both time and money at a niche business-to-business event, to have to flatter and make coffee for these interlopers. They surely have better things to do than guard their stocks of pens, or in a couple of rumours I heard circulating, remain vigilant to prevent the chairs going missing off their stand.

Therein lies a major problem with our industry: it is very hard for someone to prove you are NOT a certified events organiser (or at least, that you have actually placed and organised real events business say, in the last 20-odd years). It must be extra difficult to weed out those who are there for dubious reasons at a show which features entertainers, free glasses of plonk at every turn and, if you are savvy enough to swing it, the potential to snaffle an all-expenses-paid trip to an international destination for a “show round”.

Essentially these freeloaders are not a real threat, so it’s not so much an issue for security. Ideally at a show which requires registration these folk could be exposed before they get in the door - but how to differentiate them in our unaccredited industry from a one-man-band independent event organiser that has a genuine reason to attend? Eviction from the show floor is potentially embarrassing for all concerned. Heaven forbid in this increasingly litigious society, it could even be argued as a human rights violation (who says Aunt Shelley’s 60th Barbados family birthday bash was not an “event”?).

In an industry without accreditation their attendance at shows is, sadly, inevitable, unless organisers really crack down on the criteria for attendance. But with show visitor numbers proving a major marketing tool, is this likely? Until then, I can only caution, stand-holders, guard your pens.

Are you sitting comfortably? Good, then I’ll begin. The Meeting Support Institute has an interesting proposition for a PhD thesis on its website http://www.meetingsupport.org/.

They want to know how the age-old skill of storytelling can be put to use in meetings. Storytelling is a tried and tested method of passing down information – think of all the children’s fables told down through the generations before it became common to read and write. The tales were used to entertain and for other informative purposes – to educate, instill moral values or even preserve the culture of a particular group.

There is serious content in these simple tales, which is why they live on in this digital age. The Boy Who Cried Wolf warns habitual liars that they’ll never be believed even when they tell the truth and the tale of Chicken Licken warns against causing mass hysteria if an acorn should drop on your head…

Giving your meeting a plot and a narrative sounds infinitely more interesting than endless PowerPoint slides. If we’re going for the full Jackanory effect, these would be banned altogether and replaced with colourful images, which, of course, are more easily recalled by the brain than reams of text.

Delegates would get to meet the heroes and villains and understand their characters a bit better. Our heroes would face a dilemma – perhaps how to boost sales in the current economic climate – which might get solved by the end of the conference with a little bit of audience participation.

There would be a beginning, a middle and, most importantly for our delegates, an end. Z-list actors might get some much needed cash and think of all the fun that could be had with a few well placed sound effects.

Mass media – television, books and DVDs - has pretty much spelled the end of the art of storytelling but that doesn’t mean that people today don’t love to hear a good yarn.

Modern audiences are constantly bombarded with information, whether it's on their Blackberries or on their computer. Maybe it’s time to revisit the skills of the past to engage the delegates of the future.

The End

Tonight’s Meetings & Incentive Travel Industry Awards Dinner means a rare outing for the DJ and bow tie. There will be plaudits and prizes for the best in class. We’ll all eat and drink well and enjoy a convivial evening of music and laughter. There will be bubbly on arrival for the 700-plus guests and a chance for the industry to press the flesh and enjoy the fruits of this business. It’s been a tough year and a night out is no more than we deserve.

But that’s only part of it. Tonight is also a time to consider those for whom bubbly will never mean Champagne. Tonight is a time to consider those less fortunate and, while can enjoy ourselves, we can also make a difference to the lives of others.

As we have for more than 20 years, tonight the M&IT Awards Dinner will raise funds for Save The Children. Our target for the evening is £45,000 to purchase an ambulance for an area of Ethiopia where the 25,000 population has no means of transport to get medical treatment, something we all take for granted. The cash will also pay for equipment and staff for the ambulance for a year. At the end of the year, the local authority will take over the running costs. What a wonderful chance we have to provide health care for a large group of needy people for a relatively small sum of money.

We already have £26,000 in the kitty towards that target, thanks to the online auction that closed last week, the kind folk who donated lots and those who bid for them. Tonight we need to raise at least another £19,000 from ticket sales and the raffle to buy our ambulance.

It is the time for those who have done well to do good – so bring your wallets and enjoy your evening!

There are 365 days a year. That’s just a little reminder for those who seem to think it has shortened to three: 23-25 February.

The M&IT editorial team has been swamped with requests to meet up with suppliers and their PRs at this month’s International Confex. It suddenly seems the most important thing in the world that we meet in person during the show to discuss their "news" which at any other time of year they would happily email over or reveal on the phone. (I would add here that turning up and actually receiving real news at shows is quite a rare and pleasantly surprising thing.)

It’s great that the exhibitors are being so pro-active to get their return on investment, but many of these are UK – if not London - based and could and should be looking at opportunities to engage the press throughout the year. And let’s not forget, we’ll all be doing the rounds again at IMEX in May and then again at EIBTM in December (and quite possibly WTM, Event, Square Meal, BTMS and any other of the multitude of shows and exhibitions).

Unfortunately, there are only a limited number of us and a limited number of hours in the day. Amped up on stand coffee we'll be doing our best, but don’t be too disappointed if we can’t make each and every press call; it’s nothing personal.

There is something about the plight of Toyota that makes me think of the seminar sessions to come: ‘How to protect the brand’; ‘How Toyota lost its public’; ‘What went wrong for Japan’s most iconic company’. Perhaps what I mean is that already, particularly in the events industry, we are looking at the lessons to be learned.

One of my favourite lines on the crisis is this from the Financial Times’ David Pilling: “Watching Toyota’s slow-motion pile-up is like witnessing the sequel to Japan Inc’s own car crash in 1990 when an economic model, hailed as invincible by management gurus, plunged over a cliff.”

But even this isn’t quite fair. Toyota was not just a big brand, it was a number one brand. It was the world’s biggest and most profitable carmaker. And it has had to recall 8.5m vehicles worldwide since November to fix accelerator and brake problems.

Now I am no expert on brands, that’s your job, and I’m certainly no mechanic – but even I can recognise that problems with starting and stopping are major ones when it comes to driving. And that safety, which goes hand in hand with trust, is key in a car manufacturer. But it seems Toyota may have been forgiven the glitches and problems if it had held its hands up earlier and ‘handled’ the situation better. It is the PR fiasco that has captured so many headlines and column inches. There must be many in our industry either itching to get their hands on the PR to come or thinking ‘there but for the grace of god’…

And yet despite all the negative publicity and angry outcries, market research in the States at least suggests that the brand is still strong. An Oregon-based market research company found that the proportion of prospective Toyota buyers who have decided to opt for another brand had fallen to 7 per cent from 18 per cent immediately after last month’s recall of eight models. But trade-in prices have begun to fall and others in the industry think the flight from Toyota could still snowball. Toyota’s US sales are 16 per cent down and another hefty fall is expected this month.

So, could the scenario have been handled better? Will we see a big brand experiential roadshow from Toyota to shore up its reputation? One with lots of sleek new models exhibiting their new computerised power-override systems – which cut the engine if the brake and accelerator are pressed at the same time (or when the throttle jams open)? It’s obvious Toyota is going to have some serious explaining to do to the marketplace – we’ll have to wait and see what communication channels it uses and how successful they prove to be.

Perhaps we’ll hear from the brand experts in seminars at next year’s Confex.

Here are a few questions I’ve been pondering lately:

- Which is better, face time or Facebook?
- Should I ask a colleague who looks like she’s got a nasty case of viral marketing to ‘Catch it, bin it, kill it?’
- If I’m not above the line or below the line, does that mean I’ve crossed the line?

Even the social media-savvy Generation Y cohort in this office have been baffled by the ludicrous lingo and buzzwords landing in our inboxes lately. Call me old-fashioned, but I thought the key to success in the communication business was to convey your message quickly and concisely, junking the jargon for terms everyone understands.

I know the use of this ridiculous rhetoric is supposed to make the writer sound so much cleverer, sophisticated and technically minded than little old me but, frankly, I’m unimpressed. Having to turn to the web to decode pretentious prose just results in me feeling a tad hacked off.

The only good thing about buzzwords? Thankfully, they go out of fashion and render themselves meaningless - one minute they’re hot, next minute they’re not. After all, when was the last time you Googled someone on the Information Superhighway?

Forget speed dating or club-hopping, just pop along to the next conference you see advertised if you want to pull, apparently. For shame anyone who thought long-winded speakers, tepid coffee, PowerPoint and round table discussions were on the boring side – conferences are hotbeds of barely-contained lust, if you believe a recent feature in London newspaper The Evening Standard.

But, rather than content being key here (with apologies to our more high-minded speakers), it’s likely that the late nights, hotel bar and intellectual flirting is what raises the temperature of the average conference-goer. Harriet Sergeant, from the Centre of Policy Studies, is quoted as saying: “Of course conferences are sexy. The conference atmosphere is often electric. You see all these strangers eyeing each other up, wondering who they might be able to sleep with.”

This is oddly in contrast to my own experiences. Peering myopically at people’s name badges due to the tiny font or the badge being flipped the wrong way – yes; trying to flash other delegates the glad-eye – rarely.

She witters on: “I attended a conference of headmasters of boys’ schools where some of the men were so terribly attractive I had to remove myself after the coffee to prevent myself getting over-excited.”

Crikey – obviously I am going to the wrong conferences.

In the same article, alleged “heart-throb of the conference circuit” Niall Ferguson is reported as being (prepare to cringe) “in demand on what one of his friends refers to as the 'international bonking circuit'”. While it's not unheard of to notice the odd (often unwelcome)frisson of excitement in the over-refreshed at the winding down of the evening, and post-conference dalliances are not unheard of, this makes it sound like conferences are the new swingers clubs.

Much of the conference-related mischief is apparently down to 'foreignogamy' – ie playing away is not cheating if it’s done outside your home country/city/postcode. It’s not a new concept – Premier League footballers have been following it for years.

There’s something to be said about sexing up the image of conferences. I do spare a thought, however, for all those who have been busy trying to get their bosses to release money to stage major events by playing up the ‘meetings mean business’ angle – ie results-led business, not monkey-business.
Quite how you’d explain the latter to your boss in terms of return on investment is another matter altogether.

Team building activities seem to have become very childish of late. Alton Towers is encouraging corporates to engage their staff in Easter egg hunts and bunny spotting, while Maximillion Events is asking delegates to dress up in rubbish in an ‘eco challenge’, all in the name of creating stronger teams.

Disneyland Paris Business Solutions has also launched an environmentally friendly, outdoor fun and games-style team building programme, but to ensure it’s entirely modish it’s given it an Olympic theme too. The Ecolympiads “sustainable development championship” sees teams creating sculptures out of recycled materials and painting with red cabbages and lemons. Sounds more like a day at playschool than a corporate communication activity.

“The environmental message is relevant to individuals and corporations,” says Disneyland’s Eloi Courcoux, adding: “Most importantly, attendees have fun while they learn.”

But is having fun the most important thing about team building? Certainly the activity shouldn’t be a dreaded one, but surely it should be designed to fulfil strategic goals first and foremost?

Will creating pictures from dribbling vegetable juices really form a solid bond between staff or will it make them feel ever so slightly embarrassed? Will they learn about communication, leadership and teamwork or will they just go home with some toddler-esque artwork to stick on the fridge?

A lot of these activities won’t bring about any more changes in your team than giving them £20 and sending them off to buy ice creams in the park would.

Executed intelligently, team building can be incredibly effective and is worth investing in. It can also be enjoyable without being puerile.

The reason I was in Zimbabwe last week (see Blog below) was for a wedding. Mine, to be precise.

We chose Victoria Falls for the ceremony because we wanted something memorable - spectacular, even - rather than the orthodox and prescriptive options available in the UK. My old friend Glen Byrom from destination management company Green Route suggested it years ago and when we finally decided to take the plunge, there was no contest – it had to be The Falls. It was also because we attended another friend’s wedding there a couple of years ago and it was so wonderful, that we had to do it. Do you care? Probably not.

But I bring this up because while we were there, Thompsons Touring and Safaris announced plans to offer an 11-day tour of Zimbabwe in their next brochure. This is fairly big news. Since the political upheavals, tour operators have understandably eschewed the attractions of the area in favour of more stable destinations but this decision follows a six-day investigative round trip of the country, from Harare across the Eastern Highlands via Bulawayo, through to Victoria Falls.

Thompsons Touring and Safaris GM Angela Shackleford, sales and marketing manager Karen O’Reilly and senior contracts co-ordinator, Michelle Lazarus, whose objective was to assess the viability of offering an overland tour in Zimbabwe, described it as “a beautiful country, rich in magnificent scenery and with warm and friendly people.”

The group reported back that roads were generally very good and, although they were few, roadside toilets and facilities were very acceptable and clean. Accommodation throughout was clean and an orientation tour of Harare showed well-stocked shops and malls. There were also a lot of signs of construction, a good indication of a positive move in the economy. In a statement, Thompsons said it had a solid infrastructure in the country already, with professionally trained eloquent guides and a fleet of well-maintained vehicles.

Now just because the tour operators would risk it, doesn’t mean conference and incentive organisers should. But I think now is a good time to think about Zimbabwe, and Victoria Falls in particular, again.

A wedding isn’t a conference but there are many similarities. We had participants arriving at Vic Falls from many parts of the world. We needed a meet and greet service at the airport, transfers to The Victoria Falls Safari Lodge, a welcome dinner, a boat charter on the Zambezi, a banquet on the river bank with marquee as wet weather back-up and, believe it or not, the organisation of the ceremony itself on an island in the Zambezi with a local magistrate officiating. We also needed a photographer, a video camera crew and singers.

So, as logistically demanding as many incentive programmes. How did they do? Well I’m biased but our guests were gobsmacked. The hotel was brilliant, the food and beverage quality was fabulous, the service faultless and the event management exceeded everybody’s expectations. Green Route pulled it all together brilliantly and all the suppliers were wonderful.

And was it safe? Completely. Our guests took rides into town and enjoyed visiting restaurants, bars and haggling with the local people for their gifts and mementoes of a wonderful visit. They walked with lions, rafted, kayaked and rode elephants and helicopters.

And would we do it again? In a heartbeat.

Price gouging at this year’s FIFA World Cup in South Africa is in the news – hardly surprising that venues will be trying to make up the deficit with some sharp practice in a year following a downturn. Undesirable – but unsurprising.

The country’s reputation already struggles with the kind of crime rates that go hand in hand with massive poverty. But now the nation’s leader Zuma has had to make a public apology for a private life so colourful that it makes him a one-man baby boomer at a time when ordinary South Africans are being asked to increase birth control. You can always trust the politicians to point the spotlight where the sun don’t shine!

I passed through Johannesburg en route to Zimbabwe and Zambia last week and experienced at first hand just one of the country’s sharper practices – the art of burgling a locked suitcase in the airport in a matter of minutes. At Johannesburg Airport it is popular for travellers to have their cases wrapped in cling film. Not to keep them fresh, but to stop the airport baggage handlers from getting into them.

In my case it was too late, by the time my case had hit the carousel on arrival from Victoria Falls, someone had somehow opened the Samsonite combination lock and gone through every compartment, every zipped pocket, every shoe bag and even riffled through my toiletries (not for the faint-hearted). The three travellers whose bags came off the carousel closest to mine had suffered a similar fate – bags opened and contents strewn about but thankfully nothing obviously missing. Clearly they are looking for cash or other easily converted items. One of my party had a horrible thought: what if they had planted something instead of stealing? She swiftly ran to the man with the cling film and parted with US$7 in an effort to cling on to her possessions for the next leg of the journey.

Johannesburg’s reputation for ‘baggage handling’ is legendary so there is nothing new here. Indeed, if suitcase cracking ever becomes an Olympic sport, the Republic of South Africa is guaranteed gold medals but when the World Cup spotlight shines, the nation’s PR expertise and resources will be sorely tested by thousands of the world’s press reporting on the worst of the nation’s practices. If the airports can’t manage security in their own sterile areas, they will be publically humiliated by the world’s press – not good for tourism.

The good news for Africa is that those resort properties I visited last week such as The River Club and the David Livingstone in Zambia or the newly refurbished Bumi Hills and the Victoria Falls Safari Lodge in Zimbabwe will all benefit from the tourism business that the World Cup will bring to Southern Africa. I hope it pays them big time because they deserve it after some difficult years.

There are few places left in the world where the pound sterling currently buys any value and Southern Africa is one of them.

So the MICE debate rears its head again, with Paul D’Arcy, of the Qatar Convention Centre, the latest to step into the breach and demand the cessation of the rodent-related term MICE. Admittedly, from an editorial perspective, it’s a handy acronym to label our industry when you have a tight word limit and writing out Meetings, Incentives, Conventions and Exhibitions just isn’t going to squish in.

That said, here in the UK we just don’t use it, with most in our industry preferring to distance themselves – unsurprisingly - from the connotations of dirty, disease-infested pests. Venture into Asia, however, and the term is super-popular, and it would appear to be heading the same way in the Middle East if D’Arcy’s bid to keep it out of Qatar is anything to go by.

He posits that we are instead a ‘Meetings’ or ‘Business Events’ industry. Aligning oneself with ‘business’ is always going to be more palatable in these post-recession days, ie business by name, business by nature and none of that ‘jolly’ malarkey going on here, thank you very much. D’Arcy adds that it might also ‘more clearly enunciate to the world (governments, cities etc) the true value of our business’. Trying to doorstop someone in the corridors of power by claiming you are head of MICE is unlikely to work unless your name is Mickey and you’re at Disney HQ.

Certainly mobilising behind the ‘Business Events’ tag opens up the myriad events that are now associated with our industry. Sydney, for one, has even eschewed the convention bureau tag to go by the name of Business Events Sydney to embody all the varying types of events it encourages. No longer are we purely concerned with ‘meetings’ in terms of a small gathering of people in a room at a set venue at a single location. Increasingly our industry’s horizons are expanding into experiential events, product launches, viral campaigns using social media and webinars with global scope and interaction.

Step number one in getting taken seriously is, as always, linked to proving in monetary terms the value of our industry – something we are doing, albeit slowly. Step two could well be shedding the mousey moniker.

There are just some instances when holding an event is not the right thing to do. That’s right, I said it. I know I could be doing myself out of a job but just occasionally ‘Angry of Tunbridge Wells’ is justified in his fury.

The Evening Standard yesterday reported that Tory councillors in Westminster had been accused of “living in a different world” by spending £23k hosting a black-tie dinner despite having sacked 300 staff to plug a £20m gap in council finances.

About 300 people have been invited to the Lord Mayor’s civic banquet, taking place at the five-star Northumberland Hotel, including 49 Tory councillors and other borough mayors.

When you’re paying from the public purse it is your duty to be prudent and ensure your activities are appropriate, particularly under these circumstances, where a further £17m is at risk from investments in a failed Icelandic bank.

I understand the need to keep staff motivated as much as anyone in our industry but there are right and wrong ways to do it. From a perception point of view, swanning around in ball gowns and guzzling champagne is as bad as it gets.

We may be out of the recession but we’re not out of the woods yet and companies will be wise to apply the ‘tabloid test’ to any events they’re planning this year.

It’s depressing to hear that price gouging around this year’s FIFA World Cup could threaten to make a dent in South Africa’s burgeoning events profile - though not altogether surprising.

The cup, expected to draw some 450,000 visitors from around the world, will provide not only a glorious spectacle of the beautiful game but shine a spotlight on South Africa’s events capabilities.

Hard work has already been done on the ground, with South Africa having to provide 17 guarantees to FIFA including increased infrastructure in stadia, accommodation and transportation, along with “a supportive financial environment”. The resulting building and buzz generated from the event will no doubt go a long way to creating the all-important “legacy” that will attract future business. How woefully short-sighted, then, that some players in the industry are hiking up their prices by four times to make the most of a captive audience.

Admittedly, such is the draw of the World Cup that no doubt die-hard football fans would pay inflated rates, perhaps even sell the odd family member, to attend the games. But as UK director of African DMC Green Route David Dodgeon points out, it’s South Africa’s future reputation that could suffer.

It’s certainly not an issue limited to South Africa – word of mouth has it that some Vancouver properties had to backtrack sensationally earlier this year after inflated accommodation prices failed to attract Winter Olympics business. Burdened with an “expensive” reputation, London has already gone into damage limitation mode ahead of the 2012 Olympics. The 2012 UK Event Industry Fair Pricing and Practice Charter, already boasting 300 agencies, DMCs, venues and suppliers, aims to maintain the city’s “long-term reputation”, with signatories vowing not to rack up their rates.

For those dealing with suppliers outside of official FIFA ticketing and accommodation agent MATCH it could be a case of buyer beware. One only hopes that a new initiative by South African website Tourism Update Online, which will feature the suppliers offering rates in line with normal inflation, helps curb the temptation to whack on more zeroes than necessary. It’s one thing to capitalise on a situation – quite another to just plain old take advantage.

I’ve not been the biggest advocate of virtual meetings – I’ve always been a believer in ‘pressing the flesh’, sniffing the air, tasting the tension, if you will.

My past experience of video conferencing and webinars had left me frustrated, struggling to piece together grainy disjointed images and multiple disembodied voices.

I was the first to confidently proclaim that technology would never replace live events, but I am having to seriously reconsider my position following a demo of Marriott’s new Cisco TelePresence suite. The technology is really seamless, leading you to quickly forget your meeting companions are not real people but pixels.

In the demo, five of us sat round a semi-circular table in London and were connected with others sat at identical tables in three locations in the States. The effect was such that they appeared on the other side of the table in full life size.

The system is voice activated, so when someone speaks they appear on screen. This allows you to hold a meeting with an unlimited amount of participants at one time. There was no delay between voice and actions and voice tracking means you hear the voice from the part of the room where the person speaking is sat. Even showing your colleague a document or object is no problem – you just place it under a camera.

The benefits of this type of technology are mind-blowing for global companies – no more red-eye transatlantic flights; you can all now meet at the touch of a button. In addition, the use of these suites (being rolled out at 25 Marriotts) costs just £307 an hour. Imagine the savings on flights and accommodation, not to mention the environmental advantages.

I really was blown away by this technology and predict we are probably only a few years away from meeting as holograms! Of course, there will always be a place for live events, but for board meetings and small conflabs, I’ve got to admit TelePresence is virtually perfect.

EIBTM’s annual CEO Summit addressed two issues facing the meetings industry – the social media revolution and how to manage Generation Y.

In discussions moderated by Peter Rand, director of Industry Relations at Zibrant (alias M&IT’s Meetings Mentor), the consensus of opinion among the industry’s top executives recognised the need to empower younger recruits, giving them responsibility and space by stepping back and enabling them to develop their own confidence and style.

The discussions also recognised that the industry is sometime perceived to be an “old boys' club” and there was need to recognise that the future development lay with Generation Y. This generation, according to a press release by Reed Exhibitions, “is looking for a life/work balance, transparency within organisations, ability to be creative and to involve themselves in social communities and corporate social responsible projects.”

Smashing the “old boys' club” perception is not only laudable but essential for an inclusive industry which generates lots of fresh ideas. Generation Y’s wish list is sound and sensible, but I find it hard to believe that it is unique to this age group. Surely there are Baby Boomers or Gen X’ers who actively seek the same balance and values from their working lives? We just haven’t been asked yet …

Rand is right to recognise that the industry must “continually evolve” to attract and retain talent. Many companies or associations will have valued employees from across the age spectrum, a healthy mix of experience and steady hands, coupled with youth and enthusiasm.

Perhaps it’s time for a new debate – to cast aside the age-related labels and generalisations and work out the best way for the generations to work together.

Department store group John Lewis has been voted the UK’s favourite retailer for the third year in a row, in survey results announced last week by Verdict, a leading retail consultancy. The Verdict award is voted for by 6,000 shoppers each year.

Sales in John Lewis were up 24 per cent on Christmas Eve compared with last year. Last week the department store said sales rose by 13 per cent over the five weeks to January 2, compared with the same period last year, a feat unmatched by any of the major store groups.

So, if people like buying from you, they buy more. Quelle surprise!

So why is customer service in the UK so awful? Two weeks ago I called Currys in Crawley and told the salesman that I wanted to buy two flat screen TVs and another fridge for our new office. It had taken forever to be transferred to the salesman and I was already frustrated by the delay. In this climate I expected to have my arm bitten off by a highly motivated sales professional eager to close a deal in minutes. What did I get? Someone who couldn’t sell an overcoat to an eskimo, let alone a fridge.

Without mentioning his products or prices or benefits, he asked me if the billing address of my card was the same as the address of the new office, the delivery address. What card? I asked.
“Your credit card.” I said no. In that case, said he triumphantly, he couldn’t help me.

I pointed out that he was jumping the gun a bit, I hadn’t decided to buy anything yet, let alone chosen my preferred method of payment. Sorry, he said, he’d had a bad day. “Have you seen the weather outside?” He asked the question as if the weather excused his uselessness and brainlessness in some way. I got bored and hung up.

I am surprised that any money changes hands in UK shops at all – it’s incredibly difficult to part with cash when retailers subscribe to the old peanuts-and-monkeys employment mantra. All I want to do is give them money and get goods in return quickly. I don’t care how bad their day has been. And I don’t want to be delayed by morons. I won’t be going back to Currys.

So why does John Lewis outscore everyone else in the High Street? The quality of goods it sold and the level of its customer service won it top prize. Maureen Hinton, lead analyst at Verdict, said: "John Lewis puts everyone else to shame when it comes to satisfying its customers." And Waitrose, its sister business, won the best supermarket category. And they’re not cheap, are they? When the most expensive store is the favourite one in the teeth of a recession, there are clearly lessons to be learned.

David Barford, the director of selling operations at John Lewis, said: "I think customers are loyal to us because we offer maybe not the very lowest prices, but we offer quality – and that's value.”

With all respect to Mr Barford, I think he’s wrong. The difference with John Lewis is that they have engaged, intelligent, motivated and educated (in the sense of training) staff. When you go into John Lewis, you meet intelligent, enthusiastic people who know their products and want to do business with you. Parting with money in John Lewis is not difficult, it’s inevitable.

Tim Chudley, shareholder in Sundial, the UK’s family-owned conference venue business, is an admirer of the John Lewis system. It is a partnership where all employees have shares and therefore benefit from the company’s success. He is thinking of replicating aspects of it at Sundial, a company that already wins awards for customer service.

I have always found it bizarre that in our industry – one mostly based upon employee motivation, staff performance improvement and incentive schemes – most of our event agencies and our venue suppliers do not walk the talk by offering their employees commission, profit share schemes and other motivational structures. If they did, perhaps they might enjoy growth of 13 per cent in a recession, like John Lewis, rather than suffering with ‘Currys syndrome’.

In the word of a famous meerkat: “Simples…”

How has your New Year been? Finding it difficult to harness that sense of renewal and vigour we usually rely on to get through January? I think it’s the weather – slow journeys in to work; kids off school and that feeling of sloth that accompanies blizzards and snowstorms. Who doesn’t want to curl up in front of a roaring fire with the rest of the Quality Street and the curtains drawn?

I’m not alone it seems in struggling with my New Year health kick. Greggs, the bakery chain, sold a million mince pies every week in the month before Christmas, up 6 per cent on last year. In the week before Christmas, 250,000 more customers came through their doors and not all were buying sweet seasonal treats – the sale of savoury pies was up by 10 per cent. More than two million ‘festive bakes’ were enjoyed thanks to a campaign on Facebook to bring back the popular pie following its launch the Christmas before – a rise of 23 per cent on 2009! This apparently irresistible delicacy comprises a lattice pastry shell filled with chicken, stuffing, cranberry and sage sauce. How are we supposed to diet with the temptation of such calorie-laden nibbles before us?

But here at CAT Publications we’re luckier than most. For we have just moved in to stylish, freshly-painted offices where we each have at least twice as much space as before. There may still be some hitches with servers and phone lines, and I am still waiting for a shiny new desk, but what a feeling of excitement and change – the promise of good things to come.

It’s hardly practical to recommend an office move as a way of reinvigorating your business, but there is something about the process of slinging out the old, bringing on the new that is very refreshing. Change, I suppose you could call it, and that’s something the events industry excels at handling.

Let’s raise a glass – oops, see how easy it is to break these resolutions? – I mean let’s all hope for lots of positive change in 2010.

While our telephone numbers and email addresses stay the same, our new address is: Cat Publications Ltd, Fairway House, Portland Road, East Grinstead, West Sussex RH19 4ET

I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who checked my post-Christmas bank balance with some trepidation. Once the festive fun is over we’ve all got to pay for it, right? January is the miserable month for embarking on well-meaning but ultimately doomed-to-fail diets and cutting back on nights out and little treats. Magazines fill themselves at this time of year with New Year money-saving tips, such as cutting out one’s daily Starbucks to save £482 a year. “Make a coffee at home,” they trumpet, “And take it to work with you in an environmentally-friendly thermos flask.”
Frankly, I find it all rather depressing. However they might just have a point – those little things can quickly add up to one big thing (and possibly make a meaningful impact on the environment too).
A point well illustrated by technology company Pitney Bowes, which has conducted a study showing that the UK hospitality industry missed the opportunity to save £74m last year because of unnecessary document printing.
Richard Thompson, Pitney Bowes managing director, said the increasingly widespread use of colour printers was largely responsible for rising costs and said companies should implement strategies for dealing with document output.
“We’ve found that even the smallest companies can achieve dramatic savings if they bring their printing and document production under tighter control,” he said.
Think of all the lovely trees that would be saved too.
While it may be a bore, if we look at the small ways to tighten our belts we may be in far better shape by the end of the year. Now where’s that thermos flask...

Barely have our feet got back under the desks after the revelries of Christmas and the New Year when Mother Nature decides to hurl yet another giant snowball at us.

If the disruption just before Christmas looked bad, the disruption in the New Year looks set to be even worse according to the view from my front window. During the last cold snap it was Eurostar which hit the buffers (apparently the trains are operating today), this time around it’s the planes that are grounded.

So British Airways’ announcement that is to hold fresh talks with cabin crew union Unite to avert the threat of further strike action comes as some relief. Unite had threatened a 12-day walkout over the Christmas period, which, along with the chaos at Eurostar and Arctic conditions throughout the country would have resulted in very few people going anywhere during the season of goodwill. The action was thrown out by a High Court judge after the strike ballot was ruled to be unlawful.

So while the union and the airline battle it out over pay and conditions at the TUC, hopefully the runways at Gatwick will have had time to defrost – and there’s a chance we might actually get somewhere in 2010.

When an airline defies the findings of the Office of Fair Trading, it’s time its arrogance is pricked and the whole thing brought back to earth with a jolt. That time is here. And I suspect when it happens there will be one of those impromptu rounds of applause usually reserved for safe landings in a storm. But this time it will be global.

This week Ryanair has been accused of being "puerile and childish" over its payment policy by OFT chief executive John Fingleton. He criticised the company for fees that Ryanair adds when customers use all but one type of credit card to pay online. He said Ryanair uses a legal loophole to justify charging the extra fee. The law says that if an airline offers at least one free payment method, it is allowed to advertise cheap fares that do not include extra credit card charges.

Fingleton said Ryanair had chosen a rare payment method to get around the rules. Currently the airline only offers a free booking service to customers who pay for tickets with a MasterCard prepaid card. Fingleton said: "Ryanair has this funny game where they have found some very low frequency payment mechanism and say: 'Well because you can pay with that'.

"It's almost like taunting consumers and pointing out: 'Oh well, we know this is completely outside the spirit of the law, but we think it's within the narrow letter of the law'."

He added: "On some level it's quite puerile - it's almost childish.”

Fingleton also questioned the automatic addition of insurance to flights by airlines such as Ryanair, unless customers opted out. Ryanair’s Stephen McNamara responded thus: “Ryanair is not for the overpaid John Fingletons of this world but for the everyday Joe Bloggs.”

This remark is not just puerile, it is insulting the intelligence of its customers with breathtaking arrogance and cynicism. The OFT may or may not overpay its CEO. McNamara is in no position to judge. But Fingleton is in a position to judge if Ryanair is stitching up its customers. That’s what he is paid to do – and he says that’s exactly what Ryanair is doing. It is cynical because such sleight of hand is based upon the belief that Ryanair’s customers must be less knowledgeable than more seasoned travellers and therefore less likely to spot the extra charges.

McNamara said: "What the OFT must realise is that passengers prefer Ryanair's model as it allows them to avoid costs, such as baggage charges, which are still included in the high fares of high cost, fuel surcharging, strike-threatened airlines such as BA."

What the passenger must realise is that Ryanair is making a huge margin on credit card costs from ordinary people simply because it can, while claiming to be the airline of the people. Most suppliers when criticised by the OFT would immediately change. The OFT, after all, represents the market. But not Ryanair. Ryanair is clearly not interested in abiding by the findings of the recognised arbiter of fair trading.

I don’t know how many conference delegates use Ryanair to attend events but I think it would be a great idea if all event organisers include a special paragraph in your joining instructions carrying a financial health warning about booking with Ryanair. This should point out clearly all the dangers of Ryanair’s extra charges and recommend that delegates should choose any other airline (or train/donkey/car/bus/rickshaw for that matter) first.

That might not bring down Ryanair but it might just clip its wings.

The latest hotel trading statistics make interesting reading (see news item 'London hotels lead growth recovery in Europe'). The overall picture seems positive in a quiet sort of way – with the exception of only Prague and Budapest, all European cities profiled in the TRI Hospitality Consulting European Chain Hotels Market Review for November enjoyed a growth in room occupancy levels compared to last year. Berlin, London and Barcelona experienced the strongest increase in room occupancy levels of six to seven percentage points.

But average room revenues across Europe have continued to decline, compared to levels achieved last year, with the exception of London. Barcelona experienced the greatest decrease, with achieved average room rates dropping by almost 20 per cent to €115.27. All good news for the buyer of rooms, but bad for the hotel companies trying to turn a profit.

Only London bucked this particular trend with average room revenue up 11 per cent, year on year. Why is this? Well London has always enjoyed its own microclimate in hotel terms. Fundamentally the city has been under-supplied for many years, largely because of the cost of land and awkward planning regulations. Hoteliers struggling with today’s climate might dispute this, but when occupancy and RevPAR (revenue per available room) are rising in the teeth of a recession, there is no argument. London has never needed to be competitive in price terms with other capitals – the laws of supply and demand on home turf have prevailed and now a weak pound is keeping the city in a strong position.

In the 11 months to November, London’s RevPAR was €123. Paris and Amsterdam are close behind but if you look elsewhere in the league table, the rates drop dramatically – for example, Berlin is just €89 and Barcelona €76 while Budapest is a snip at €58! These figures are impacted by the type/quality of rooms available but London’s room stock quality benchmark is not viewed to be high when related to the rates charged. The fear must be that if/when a real recovery takes hold, rates will rise even more steeply.

According to another report by TRI with Visit London called the London Hotel Development Monitor, there are currently 5,000 hotel rooms under construction in the capital plus another 19,000 in the planning stage. That may sound a lot, but it isn’t when you consider the demands that 2012 will generate. Some projects have been put on ice during the cold climate but of the hotels planned to open before 2012, 40 per cent of the rooms will be in the five-star category. Could this be the infusion of quality rooms that may pull down that pumped-up RevPAR figure?

I’m not sure. London hotel occupancy in November was 88 per cent -much higher than any of its European competitors. Great for our London and great for the wider economy but not so great for event organisers seeking a snip in our capital. If you are looking for a deal in 2010, you might try Leeds or Budapest instead.

Someone called Paula Ripoll-Ferreres from the Association of Event Organisers (AEO) sent me a press release today. It was a typical release as these things go – it was full of ‘olds’. (This is the opposite of ‘news’ and traditional fare in the events industry.)

We hacks regularly show up at so-called ‘news conferences’ to find the information being distributed was first released and previously published several months earlier. Those holding the press conferences – usually at trade shows – are quite shameless about it. They book the slots months in advance without knowing if they will have news to release and, if they don’t, they just tell us old stories! It’s a terrible waste of our time and resources and this year I complained to the organisers of EIBTM.

We won’t be going to these things in future unless the organisers of these events (and EIBTM is not the only culprit) impose some quality control. And the suppliers? They need to be a lot better at news management and PR than they are. The trade associations such as the AEO are just as bad. Mostly the events industry is to good PR practice what British MPs are to financial probity.

Take today’s AEO release, for example. It was headlined 'AEO delivers outstanding value to its members in 2009'. Well they would say that, wouldn’t they? The release had nothing new in it at all. CEO Austen Hawkins is quoted as saying the AEO has been brilliant in 2009 and he mentioned some of the AEO achievements. Specifically: “2009 may have been a bad year for the economy but AEO has risen to the challenge and has delivered outstanding events, services and value to its members.”

Well, congratulations, Austen - and so you should. But is it news? Sorry, mate, but it isn’t. It’s a lot of rehashed ‘olds’ and we have no interest in it.

And while I’m on this subject, allow me to suggest that 1.45 pm on Christmas Eve is not the ideal time to maximise the coverage you get from any press activity. If hacks aren’t in the pub at that time, they never will be.

I am now off in that general direction and wish you all a great break and a healthy and happy 2010, whatever your religious persuasion. I also wish that in 2010, the events industry learns how to be much better at press relations than it currently is.

Happy Christmas!

The Panto season is upon us with all the usual shenanigans it may bring - men dressing as women, women dressing up as men, evil baddies at whom you can boo and hiss.

There’s been plenty of panto fun on the TV news this week. Not of the cross-dressing, tight-wearing variety, but at the moment it’s hard to tune in without shouting “Oh no it isn’t” or “Oh yes it is” at the screen. The question that seems to have perplexed the pundits is whether or not the UK is still in recession.

“Oh no it isn’t,” chirped the principal boys at the CBI (Confederation of British Industries), which forecast earlier this week that economic output will have grown by 0.5 per cent between October and December, meaning that Britain will have finally exited its recession, becoming the last major economy to do so.

“Oh yes it is,” countered the Big Bad Broadcasting Corporation a day or two later. The Beeb reported that, yes, for now, the UK economy was still going backwards. Figures released by the Office of National Statistics for July to September showed that the economy had shrunk by -0.2 per cent, just a sniff better than the predicted -0.3 per cent. It’s official, they said, the recession has not yet ended.

But there is a silver lining to this gloomy cloud which began in the second quarter of 2008. Most analysts believe that fourth quarter figures will show a pot of gold at the top of the beanstalk with the economy returning to growth.

Some believe they will be proved right when the good fairy waves her magic wand over revisions to fourth quarter forecasts.

"We are expecting this number to be revised upwards and this will eventually be seen as a growth quarter," said Amit Kara from UBS. "The big picture is that the economy is recovering... we see growth at 1.8 per cent next year."

For those still toiling away in Chinese laundries, scrubbing floors for ugly sisters or even working in the events industry, 2010 certainly won’t bring streets paved with gold, but it might just have a happy ending.

Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year to all.

Everybody loves a good argument, particularly when it concerns two hotel titans and London’s floppy-haired mayor and is played out in the national media.

Edward Wojakovski, the group chief executive of Metropole Hotels, has thrown his toys because Boris Johnson decided to waive competition rules to award the contract for the 2011 SportAccord international event to the Park Plaza Westminster Bridge. It’s easy to see why – the contract is worth close to £1m, however, it’s also easy to understand why Boris chose the brand new Westminster Bridge as the best venue for the job. The hotel, set to open in February, is a £350m shining beacon for the city with 1,021 bedrooms, a ballroom accommodating 1,400 theatre-style and an additional 31 meeting rooms. As the Olympics loom, BoJo is understandably keen to showcase our newest and glossiest to the 1,500 top sporting officials and businesspeople who will attend the six-day event.

Wojakovski is peeved because his Hilton London Metropole didn’t get a chance to tender and has requested a full investigation. Boris claims the hotel doesn’t have the necessary facilities for the event; Wojakovski argues that it does. (Quite what level of experience BoJo has as a PCO/site selector has yet to be explained.)

Perhaps the proper process wasn’t carried out, but what’s the point in complaining now? If the Park Plaza has been chosen – officially or unofficially – then it’s been chosen, and there’s no point in carrying out a charade of a pitch which is going to waste the time of everybody involved.

Perhaps it's a case of the Hilton London Metropole having its nose put out of joint? Up until now it has had no competition when it comes to big events in the city, being the largest hotel in London since the 1970s. Of course it’s going to be unhappy with this newcomer but, like an only child who is delivered a new sibling, it will have to learn to share!

It all began so well: saw the weather forecast, checked the flight time to Koln/Cologne (07.10), anticipated problems with early morning driving, pre-booked the parking at Gatwick, booked the hotel room, arrived in good time the night before, pre-checked baggage that night and wandered back to the Gatwick Hilton with my boarding card and enjoyed a good dinner, smugly congratulating myself on my foresight and organisational skills. We woke up on time at 05.30, checked out, walked back to the airport and… the nightmare began.

All Easyjet flights were delayed because… the runway wasn’t safe for use. Why? Because we’d had a dusting of snow the night before. Were they not expecting it? Obviously all the airport staff had been on Mars for the past couple of weeks and were unable to get the news that some snow was on its way.

Consequently all Easyjet flights were delayed. So they didn’t let us go airside and so the build-up of bodies began, gently at first but then it was mayhem. Not enough seats for people to sit so they sat and lay down on the floor. Not enough outlets for refreshments so the queues grew until Starbucks’ customers were waiting 45 minutes to get served. Soon people were wandering around like those scenes in Blade Runner, long faces gazing jealously at those who had been lucky enough to find somewhere to park their behinds, children getting separated from parents and crying. Awful.

It wasn’t as if it was a lot of snow. It was only a couple of inches deep at Gatwick. As someone said to me: “I stuck more than that up my nose last night!” He didn’t really – I made that bit up. But you get my drift, if you’ll excuse the pun.

Finally, at 9.45, they announced that, along with around 10 others, our 07.10 flight was cancelled and we retrieved our bags and trudged home. (“The later flight is sadly full, sir – sorry if you have been inconvenienced.”) Sorry? Not as sorry as me. Last night’s bills were flashing before my eyes…

No point in blaming Easyjet for the runway, I suppose. The airport management should use the finger of blame as a suppository, in my opinion. All over the world aircraft were taking off in much worse conditions without any problem but good old UK plc failed again in the basic requirement of any airport – to get an aircraft off the ground. It was embarrassing to be British this morning. Foreign travellers were shaking their heads in disbelief at our extraordinary incompetence.

I look forward to London 2012 with eager anticipation. Lucky we didn’t bid for the Winter Olympics!

We are not going to save the world just by being pleasant to each other, surely.

Every CSR meeting I’ve ever attended since the acronym first entered the lexicon has been characterised by the green lobby bending over backwards, like saplings in the wind, allowing, almost begging, anyone to disagree with them.

By now you would think the defenders of the planet would have sharpened up their act, bared their teeth, come out fighting. But no, even at the EIBTM CSR seminar, they were their masochistically understanding selves.

“Why isn’t there just one certification system in existence?” growled one attendee.

“Well, you don’t have to get certified if you don’t want to,” was the wondrously placatory response.

“Certification costs a lot of money,” another aggrieved audience member grumbled.

“You don’t have to tackle everything all at once,” came the benign reply.

In the end, when you so much wished the green-fingered would rise up and inspire the two-fingered to action with an impassioned plea, or berate it for its energy gluttony, there was no fire in the belly, no spark in the soul.

Simply the merest hint of a half-suggestion that perhaps we would all like to go away and think about what energy we could save at our next event and then come back and report on it. But only if we really, really wanted to. ‘Bye world, nice knowing you.

Hot on the heels of Norway’s award-winning marketing campaign in which the country’s convention bureau flogged meetings space on the back of a pert pair of buttocks, it appears Switzerland is now trying to muscle in on the act.

An email flyer invites planners to 'Discover the latest preparations for an outstanding winter season. You'll definitely be surprised!' Yes, topping scenes of hot tubs and snowy squares and even a traditional scene of a beardy bloke filling up the booze barrel on his St Bernard is a toned and tanned (but probably rather cold) skier, bare from the waist up save for a fetching pair of sunnies.

When it comes to destination promotion, nudity is the new business suit. Norway’s rear of the year was a popular attraction at trade shows and bagged the convention bureau the ICCA Best Marketing Award 2009. Daring to bare was definitely good for the bottom line. For just €150 (£134) in brand development costs, Norway’s three-year €1m (£891,000) marketing campaign attracted incoming international visitors worth €93.6m (£83.3m) for the local economy.

So if you want to draw in the delegates, ditch the clothes. It’s likely, though, that a naked woman would have the opposite impact on an overwhelmingly female audience. And that’s probably the reason why 84 per cent of polled meeting planners had a positive approach to the Norway brand.

The meetings industry, we have been told by industry commentators, needs to be made more ‘sexy’ if the industry is to attract more cash and attention from the powers that be, so use of naked fellows could go some way to achieving this.

If bums are in and pecs are out this year, what naked body parts will other bureaux be displaying in their 2010 campaigns? Will anyone be brave enough to go the Full Monty? Here’s a suggestion… perhaps they could raise some cash for the great cause that is Meetings Industry Meeting Needs by bringing their naked folk together for a calendar.

Chatting with organisers behind the meetings behemoth that is the COP 15, it’s admirable that the estimated 40,500 tonnes of CO2 expected to be produced around the show will be offset in full. However, of that only 10 per cent is pertaining to the event itself – the rest? Travel to and from Denmark, of which air travel will play no mean part.

It’s easy to paint the aviation industry as big, bad nasties - some airlines are doing themselves no favours by leaving a million people high and dry at Christmas or adding 30 per cent to your low cost ticket if you want to do something as outrageous as bring a suitcase with you. And if you pay by credit card you can pay a surcharge, too (you know who you are).

But when it comes to 'green', many are trying to take action. The International Air Traffic Association (IATA) has said it wants to reduce CO2 emissions by 1.5 per cent annually until 2020 then record neutral growth from 2020, with an aim of 50 per cent fewer emissions by 2050.

Talking to Martin Porsgaard, environmental and sustainability director at SAS - Scandinavian Airlines, is something of a revelation. In true Nordic tradition SAS has set itself strict targets – 20 per cent lower emissions in total by 2020, 50 per cent lower emissions by passenger kilometre by 2020, achieving ISO14001 certification, and flying an all-new fleet by 2011.

Porsgaard posits: “By 2050 it should be possible to fly without any kind of emissions.” One can only imagine that he does not mean humans will mutate and grow wings – though in a nod to a barely plausible futuristic flight of fancy he does mention in passing solar impulse technology (that is, solar panels on aircraft wings. No flights to rainy old Britain then?)

But, realistically, how do they plan to do this? Well, Porsgaard says, in 2012 1 to 2 per cent of airline fuel should be alternative fuel, at 2015 that will be 3 to 5 per cent and at 2020 up to 8 per cent and that figure should double by 2030. Moreover, air traffic management should be able to reduce emissions by 10 to 12 per cent – that’s improvements in pilot planning, taxiing and queuing (hopefully meaning no 20 minute flights around and around Heathrow while you wait for your ‘slot’); green starts (involving a one-climb take off) and the slightly scary slower speed testing and glide-in landing options. All are reliant on better education, international guidelines and global buy-in.

New fleets of 'greener' planes will help, too (though cynics are right in noting that, as the older ones just get sent to 'upgrade' those in poorer countries, it’s likely to be a long process). Economic instruments such as emission trading will no doubt play a part too. But Porsgaard is realistic: “It’s greenwashing to say it is green – flying is polluting. It won’t be 'green' for many years.”

Porsgaard is quick to quote that the aviation industry is responsible for only 2 to 3 per cent of CO2 emissions in the world, and creates 32 million jobs. And where would the meetings and incentive travel industry be without it? Destination options would be limited to buy local, or those European cities hooked up to high-speed train networks. If we are to continue to have a choice may we hope all airlines take on board the sustainability message - otherwise they will be left behind.

It was great to see Virgin Trains exhibiting at an Arena Convention Centre Liverpool showcase in London recently. I’m a big fan of letting the train take the strain. Although we still have plenty of problems with our rail networks in the UK, to travel from London to one of our northern cities on the train is, mostly, a pleasure. Big, comfortable seats, desks you can work at, space to walk around, increasingly good food and beverage and delightful staff easing the way. And the speeds are surprisingly quick – under three hours to NewcastleGateshead, 1.5 hours to Stoke and just over 2.5 hours to Liverpool.

The price can be a sticking point. Although we all know there are cheap deals to be had if you book far enough in advance, for meeting organisers that’s not always feasible and the ticket prices can by eye-watering. This is one of the reasons I was so pleased to see Virgin Trains’ Stephen Robinson enjoying the fabulous views from the BT Tower along with the other Liverpool suppliers.

Event organisers need a contact to work with: to advise on routes, timings, prices. And then all the other touches possible when travelling by rail: hiring of exclusive carriages, upgrading of f&b, corporate theming. I don’t know if Virgin Trains can offer any of this yet or is even planning to – it hasn’t announced the launch of this service for groups because, as Stephen explained, they haven’t got all the bits in place yet such as booking online.

What they are offering at the moment, via the ACC Liverpool, is complimentary first class return travel from London for event organisers with a confirmed appointment at the ACC Liverpool.

There was a time when train companies offered equipped conference carriages, dedicated to meetings en route. I’m not aware that this is on the cards at Virgin – or that their venue partners would be so thrilled by the idea – but it could be time to bring back some of the glamour and romance of rail travel as we try to take fewer planes and leave the car at home.

I’d like to say, after weeks of receiving numerous emails about COP15 expecting at least “3,000 journalists and 12,000 delegates” that the UN may well have expected, say, at least 3,000 journalists and 12,000 delegates to turn up to register before proceedings began. Well, perhaps not, given the mayhem that ensued the day before kick-off. Step one: queuing in freezing temperatures and bitter winds under a metro station overbridge for one hour until we get the nod to go into step two: more queuing, this time within the grounds of the Bella Center (officially declared ‘UN territory’) under a marginally less freezing canvas pagoda, before, step three: heading into the warmth of the inner sanctum for, yes, yet another queue, so we could go through one of the four security stations out of 22 that were actually functioning.

We were in! Then the fun part really began. Accreditation was meant to be done in advance and electronically accepted by the UNFCC. I had managed to get mine back, all accepted and after storming to the front of the queue (once I found it in the far-too-small registration area, overlapping with the haphazard help desk queue and the UN queue and climbing over several people and suitcases in the process) I handed over my passport, signed a sheet and then, hurrah, got to queue in another line to get my photo done. Two hours after I started I was home and hosed, my lanyard like gold dust around my now de-frosted neck. Alas six out of my 10 industry media colleagues were not so lucky. Some had arrived with their accreditation still “pending”. They now had to wait in a holding bay. And wait. And wait. And argue with the UN staff. And wait some more. Bewilderingly, some got told yes, they could go in, then moments later, oh actually no you can’t. Others who had been accepted were told trade press “were no longer a priority”, despite being accepted in the first place. We watched while a man who had flown in from Taiwan to cover proceedings was told that, even though his accreditation had been approved he was not getting in – the event was over-subscribed and, well, Taiwan isn’t in the UN. If he came back tomorrow with a letter from someone in China he might get in. Maybe.

Admittedly, some 34,000 delegates, journalists and observers, according to some reports, had registered to attend, compared to the 15,000-odd expected. But had this even been factored in? A couple of thousand extra bodies to register is not a couple of late-comers who caught the later flight. And why the complete lack of coherent policy as to who could come in and who couldn’t?

An hour later we were still waiting. I had made the fatal error of parking myself rather neatly out of the way on the floor in a corner, making notes. A UN security guard came over to tell me I was not allowed to sit on the floor. “This is not a picnic,” he barked. No kidding, buddy. This is a mess. Thanks to Herculean efforts and several harried phone calls our Visit Denmark and Wonderful Copenhagen hosts ensured we were all badged up – a grand total of four hours later. The result – 10 editors from international magazines which focus on best practice in the meetings industry, left wondering how on earth the UNFCC had got this registration business so hideously, horribly wrong?

Last week’s Sunday Telegraph story on how BT Global Services division has continued to spend cash on long-haul and glitzy-looking events while making 25,000 staff redundant could be the beginning of some very bad news for the UK events industry. The story picked up where our blog the week before left off – highlighting the apparent iniquity of spending £1 million this year on an event in Provence for just 150 senior staff while announcing cuts of 30,000 jobs and planning another event in Istanbul next year.

Understandably, such timing looks bad to Telegraph readers (see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/telecoms/6679255/BT-criticised-for-splashing-out-on-foreign-trips-while-cost-cutting.html).

In the events industry our attitude may be different in that we understand the need for communication via live events, but did it have to be five-star? Did it have to be Provence when a pay freeze had been announced? Did it have to be so insensitively positioned that it attracted the newspaper group that was prepared to take on Parliament itself? How dumb is that? Why not use a moderately priced UK venue in this climate and take the heat off? BT Global Services management, it seems, uses a different rule book from the rest of us.

Our blog (see Nov 22) focused instead on BT’s highly irregular decision to use a new agency (no accounts yet filed) that isn’t on BT’s preferred supplier list to handle next year’s Istanbul event. By pure coincidence (we are sure), this agency is owned by Kevin Ingram, the man who presided over THA Group’s failure with debts of £6 million-plus. Who was one of THA’s major creditors? Yes, you’ve guessed it, BT Global Services.

Oddly, the list of creditors compiled by administrators KPMG does not break down how much was owed to whom (usually they do). But BT is listed twice as a creditor and it is believed THA owed BT in excess of £100K. So why would they recruit the services of Mr Ingram again and risk:
• Losing money again
• The wrath of the agencies that are on the approved supplier list
• The bad publicity that such a decision will attract

We don’t know the answers to any of these questions. We believe that only a few individuals at the top of Global Services do, but it’s clear that a lot of people are keeping their heads down over this murky business and hoping all the bad news will go away – but it won’t. (This includes some of those on the list who hope they will get business from BT if they ever change their agency).

Now the national press has a taste for this story, they won’t let it go. The hacks at the Telegraph are digging deep. BT could be the UK industry’s AIG. In the US a year ago, the American press had a field day with stories about how much the insurance giant was spending on incentive programmes while taking government handouts. Suddenly the US meetings and events industry was put under extraordinary pressure – press and broadcast media ran stories criticising the US events industry as a whole by using AIG as an example of its profligacy. The whole business of corporate events was put into disrepute and the US industry was unprepared for it. They had no PR budget and no resources to deal with it. After months of criticism on radio, TV and in print, and a severe downturn in business, they got the support of the main US tourism trade association and managed to get a personal audience with Barack Obama. Obama listened and agreed to temper his criticism of the industry overall and focus instead on the folly of AIG.

So where does this leave BT? Where they don’t want to be: firmly in the spotlight. You may not be able to phone BT without pressing every key on your keyboard and eating your lunch while they deign to answer but you can be sure this message has gone to the executive washroom. The Telegraph has already received a complaint from the top about the story it carried.

Where does it leave the events industry? Fearful of a backlash that will hurt all venues and agencies and restrict the activities of other corporate entities in the events space. In short, BT’s folly could hurt us all. The subject of BT’s behaviour has already been raised at an Eventia board meeting but the events industry association is powerless to do anything.

Unless suppliers refuse to work with BT, perhaps. BI Worldwide, one of the UK’s top event agencies and the one that acquired the assets of THA from the administrators, has already told BT Global Services it will not be bidding for future business because “the playing field is not level”.

Unfortunately, not all such suppliers have such high ideals. Meptours, the Istanbul-based destination management company that lost close to £100K when THA went down, has contracted to handle BT’s 2010 Master’s Club event in Istanbul, working with Kevin Ingram’s new agency, the Waterford House Partnership. Presumably to try to get some of its money back…

At the time of writing it is 27 days and counting until not only your New Year party begins, but also the start of the intimidating complications which surround changes to Value Added Tax (VAT) and Tour Operators’ Margin Scheme (TOMS) regulations (see news story). Yes indeed, we will be brushing our New Year’s hangovers aside to wonder how on earth to reconcile the 15 per cent VAT invoices we sent in 2009 for that event in February 2010, which is now subject to TOMS and VAT at 17.5 per cent. Clear as mud? Yep. Even David Bennett, VAT partner, Saffery Champness admits it is “messy”. Considering I am unaccustomed to calculating much more than CPW, (that’s Cost Per Wear ratio, an advanced accounting term for those who deal frequently in expensive footwear procurement), Bennett was an excellent sport in walking me through the situation.

And where would that be, exactly, with less than a month to go? Erm. Well, that’s not so clear either. Bennett, who has been assisting Eventia, the HBAA and ABTA as they lobby HM Revenue & Customs for TOMS not to be applied in a business-to-business situation, admits that while discussions have been “positive” there may not be any clear answer prior to Christmas. The possibility of “some discretionary concession” aside, it would appear HMRC’s dilly-dallying on decisions is only serving to muddy things further. Most agency staff I have spoken to have the same look as me when the subject is broached (something akin to pained confusion) and many are getting experts in to talk staff through the process in preparedness.

But ultimately, what is the point at the pointed end of developments? Well, potentially TOMS could spell out more cost to the client and smaller margins for agencies through a loss of VAT recovery. With billback as we know it under threat, will clients bypass agencies to deal with venues direct? Will the agency model be uncompetitive? Will we have to initiate new billing processes? Moreover, will we get to the bottom of this before we have to take the tinsel down? Come on HMRC, help us start the New Year with at least a little bit of clarity.

On our way to The O2 to watch, as it turned out, Andy Murray beat Spanish Fernando Verdasco in a very close match, Carlos Canto, of IMG Consulting, based in Barcelona, asked whether there had been much public opposition to O2’s naming of the London venue.

A reasonable enough question, particularly from someone who doesn’t live in the UK. And one that prompted me to remember the derision, scorn, even hatred that was poured on the poor old Dome leading up to the Millennium celebrations. I happily explained that as there had been no public love of the venue and no sense of public pride or ownership, few had even seemed to notice. And the general feeling, as I remember it, among those that did was that finally this white elephant had been taken out of the tax payers’ hands. Indeed, many still don’t seem to realise that they are one and the same place. (Heaven knows what they will think in 2012, when for a short time The O2 Arena, for all Olympic purposes, will be known as North Greenwich Arena 1 - given that its namesake company is rival to major Olympic sponsor BT.)

But what a huge loss to London it would have turned out to be had it not been built. There are some that see venues like this as having played a crucial role in helping London buck the recessionary trends of other European cities by attracting so much leisure business with its excellent entertainment options. (Just think what it would have been like if Michael Jackson had lived to play his planned tour at the O2...)

Every person bar none that I spoke to raved about what a fabulous venue the O2 is whether for this - the largest indoor tennis event ever, selling 260,000 of the 265,000 available seats for 15 sessions – or a night out to watch a band performing live. And how often is it that you go anywhere where everybody is not just pleasantly surprised but clearly delighted?

We were there as guests of the Balearic Islands Tourist Board at the ATP World Tour Finals, the first time the tournament has been held in London and where it will remain until 2013 at least.
Explaining why the ATP World Tour Finals have come to London, the Sunday Times’ Barry Flatman says: “A venue with as much potential as The O2 was the perfect fit… this is the O2 which stands as a venue that merits the best there is on offer.”
In his welcome, Adam Helfant, ATP executive chairman and president, says: “Staged in what has become the world’s leading entertainment venue – The O2…”

With the charming Majorca-born Rafael Nadal as a Balearic Islands figurehead – thus the tennis connection – his appearance in the hospitality box delighted his audience rather than embarrassing them as these visits so often can. And he delighted around another 2,000 surprised visitors to the O2, who were able to watch him practising on the public practise courts.

As long as the Jubilee Line is running well – by no means guaranteed – this venue is easily accessible. But just to avoid any potential transport hitches, the players for this event were brought in by boat. But let’s not get started on London traffic… but instead cheer a truly great venue in our capital that is there thanks to the public purse and now thrives thanks to some creative commercial minds.

The Christmas Party season will soon be in full swing but not everybody’s celebrating. For those lucky enough to hold onto their jobs at companies such as Northern Rock, Honda and Goldman Sachs, traditional festivities have been cancelled according to a report by The Independent. Although many firms think it’s too ‘Bah, humbug’ to cancel Christmas entirely, many are scaling back on the revelry in line with the new spirit of austerity, and some big financial companies are restricting themselves to a maximum budget of £10 per head (KFC Bargain Bucket anyone?).

For those employees determined to party, holding your party in the office might be a budget-conscious option for this year’s no-frills do. The surroundings may be a little familiar, but there might just be a few quid left in the kitty to cover a few trays of sausage rolls and Scotch Eggs, a dozen bottles of cheap fizz and some flimsy party hats.

But turning your benign working environment into a venue for merrymaking is a risky business fraught with unexpected dangers at every turn, according to guidelines set out by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA). The organisations recommend that Christmas parties are held in outside venues such as hotels, bars or restaurants which they designate as “facilities designed for people having a good time”. For organisers confined to using facilities which aren't designed for people having a good time, the organisations have compiled a number of tips for keeping your employees safe. Here are just a few…

Did you know that innocuous-looking Christmas tree can be a real hazard if handled incorrectly? Apparently more than 1,000 people were injured by them in 2002. Safety gurus suggest securing the blighters and making sure they won’t be knocked by people walking by or agitating them by pulling their cables.

Far more sinister than the Christmas tree is the party balloon. Deadlier than a Portuguese Man O’War, one of these could spell the Last Noel for someone in your office. Heed the chilling warning: “Party balloons can cause severe reactions, potentially deadly, in people who are allergic to latex. Around 3.6 million people in Britain suffer from some degree of latex allergy.”

Utmost care should also be taken around office equipment. As well as the potential for ruining your computer by offering it a vodka and coke, bigger items pose their own painful hazards. “Resist the temptation to photocopy parts of your anatomy, if the copier breaks, you’ll be spending Christmas with glass in some painful places.”

Table-dancing could land your colleagues in casualty, but apparently this is one thing that hasn’t been completely outlawed by the Noel naysayers. “Office furniture isn’t designed to be as sturdy as the furniture in your local pub,” warns the guidelines, “So dancing on desks could do them and you a lot of damage. Likewise, the boardroom table is meant for weighty documents, not overweight executives.”

Unfortunately there are no guidelines covering table-dancing in killer heels, leading me to the conclusion that the guidelines were written by a man. But presumably this too is permissible, so long as it takes place in a pub. The jury is still out on whether an overweight woman wearing stilettos should be allowed near a table anywhere.

Tough times can lead to innovation. In many ways an economic downturn produces a healthy shake-up, with companies trimming off the fat and indentifying more effective working processes. Some ideas are radical and rather scary, like the ditching of books in favour of electronic reading machines. But if we don’t dip our toe in the technological water, someone else will and the danger of becoming outmoded looms.

Recent company restructure announcements - such as that of UniversalProcon – have started to include elements of mobile working. While not proposing to completely eliminate the office, employees are being empowered to work from home or their clients’ offices, thus enabling a cost saving on premises. But what if we were to take it one step further and create a fully virtual office? In the event management field almost all business can be conducted from a laptop and a phone, and with increasingly better videoconferencing technology, convening with colleagues is possible from anywhere in the world.

If all knowledge-based companies were to adopt this working model, think of the benefits to the environment from the eradication of the daily commute. Workers could move out of cities, easing over-crowding, and more flexible working hours would allow families to spend quality time together. One forward-thinking agency is already operating virtually. Pimento has also dispensed with employees, using 70 consultants instead. This must be the ultimate cost and risk-minimising model, although staff do lose out on stability.

The question is, are the reductions in overheads from a virtual office worth the potential loss of creativity gained from daily employee interaction? Doesn’t our industry exist because of the need for face-to-face meetings? If we can work effectively from disparate locations, we might have trouble persuading others of the importance of a pricey New York board meeting.

However, the rise in virtual conferencing is another scary change we need to face up to. We all know we can’t stand in the way of progress so those organisations that are to prosper in the future must be prepared to adapt their offerings.

Pity the poor association manager. No longer is her problem where to meet tomorrow, but how to eat today. Members are leaving in droves to seek solace and sense on the net or in the warmer embrace of rival associations. Board directors are reluctant to step out of their familiar pyjamas and assume a different position. While she strives to win back disaffected lovers with more make-up, she also has to convince her principals to take the radical route to everlasting love.

Association executives rarely get to discuss these things on a level playing field. But in Brussels they did. The majority of them feel at home there because it’s where they work and the invitation from the century-old Union of International Associations to meet and chat seemed unthreatening. Quite a few walked to the UIA HQ in Rue Washington. And what was on their minds?

"How should we develop our association?"

"How do we get a benchmark?"

"How do we add value for our members?"

"What can we learn from other associations?"

Taken in hand by meeting professionals, they were led towards other conclusions:

"We can’t afford to do things the way we have always done them."

"We need to convince our board of the need to invest and introduce revenue streams."

"We need to remain relevant."

To the casual observer, the terms of endearment were similar to corporate boardroom speak. But these are associations, not corporations. And their sensitivities must be directed inwards as well as outwards.

The association executive has to flatter on two fronts. First to persuade the board to try something new and, second, to convince the membership to stick around. Simple for those ambidextrous enough to satisfy a spouse at home while keeping a lover keen on the side.

BT Global Services’ recent announcement that it will save costs on events by reducing the size of its event agency roster (see news section), will have brought a grim smile to those who are on the list.

Most of them have seen precious little business from BT in recent times, despite working hard to go through the time and money-consuming business of adhering to BT’s procurement processes and demonstrating things like track record, transparency and financial probity.

One company that does stand out as a beneficiary of profit from BT’s events in the past year is the ill-fated THA Group that collapsed so spectacularly with debts of more than £6 million. THA ran an event at the Four Seasons in Provence for BT in May just a few weeks before administrators were brought in by THA. BT had to guarantee payments for the event. The most cursory of credit checks on THA would have demonstrated why. They would have learned that THA had made a loss of £597K after tax in 2006. More worryingly, in the 2007 accounts the balance sheet showed net assets of £2.7 million but included in the assets column was £3.8 million of intangible ‘goodwill’. There were also bank borrowings of £687K.

Is this the kind of financial probity required of its suppliers by BT?

Given BT’s rigid adherence to strict procurement processes and its demanding agency roster, two questions are being asked by all the agencies on the BT list:
1. Why would BT now appoint an agency with no track record that was incorporated only a few months ago and is not on its roster (The Waterford House Partnership) to organise its 2010 Master’s Club event in Istanbul?
2. Why would BT appoint a new agency owned and managed by someone (ex-THA CEO Kevin Ingram) who presided over the collapse of THA Group with debts of more than £6 million when BT was a client of that agency at the time and one of its biggest creditors when it went down?

We, too, would love to know the answers. Perhaps BT would care to phone a friend before answering.

The debate about travel and which is the greenest way to get from A to B is confusing and complicated. It might seem obvious that driving a gas-guzzling Range Rover in an urban area is not an environmentally-friendly thing to do, but how about flying from Southampton to Edinburgh, for instance?

All these arguments were highlighted in the recent entertaining spat between conference call provider Powwownow and Flybe airline. Flybe has produced an advertisement urging business people to keep flying for face to face meetings as conference calls don’t win business. Powwownow, understandably peeved – it is, after all, how they make their money – responded with a vandalised version of the Flybe ad making the case for how conference calls can save time, substantial amounts of money and are also much greener as they don’t destroy the environment as flying does.

Well, they would say that wouldn’t they? Despite some strong words, both companies have taken a tongue-in-cheek approach to the row and tried to point to independent research which makes their case. Unfortunately there is not much to support either side. Flybe points to a BBC report into a Southampton University study that shows that, largely because the airline has one of the youngest fleets of aircraft in the world, flying Flybe as a single traveller to Edinburgh from Southampton could be a greener choice than driving in a Toyota Prius. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/hampshire/content/articles/2008/09/24/ecotravelling_feature.shtml)

Flybe also has a rather cheeky link on its website to some quite funny stories it solicited from passengers about disasters with conference calls and in particular video conferences.

Powwownow has responded with its own link (http://www.flypowwownow.co.uk/), pointing out how the number of meetings has reduced because of the economic climate and how corporates, in particular, are turning increasingly to conference calls and web conferencing.

At the end of the day, they both have a point. There is no doubt that doing business via conference calls, webinars, videoconferencing et al is increasing in popularity. As the technology improves, people become more confident using it and pressure on budgets remains, it will continue to be an increasing market. But we all also know there are times when only a face to face meeting will do. And sometimes that means getting on a plane.

How damaging that journey is to the environment will depend on what the great aviation industry brains currently wrangling with these issues come up with. It is one of the most high-tech industries in the world and one that operates on very small margins – the incentives to cut fuel consumption and therefore emissions is enormous.

Being a naturally nosy sort, I was listening in to a conversation between two air passengers who had just switched their phones on after landing at their destination. “Where did you get that old thing, it’s a relic!” ribbed the older relative. “My dad got it off eBay for me after my other one broke,” piped her teenage companion, “I know it’s old but I can’t be bothered to learn how to use a new one.”

I sympathise with that young girl. Though I wouldn’t call myself a Luddite, I lack both the patience and inclination to go through the chunky manuals that now accompany new phones. All I want is to instantly handle the basics – to make calls or send texts – the rest I’ll pick up along the way.

Arriving at my destination hotel, I am shown to my room by a friendly receptionist. I am first alerted to the room’s shiny newness by the rubbery perfume of barely-trod carpet. Dotted around are gleaming panels of buttons controlling everything from the ambience of the lighting to the security phone. The cushions are plumper than an Italian Mama’s backside. The room is flawless, pristine - everything about this place screams ‘recent costly refurb.’

A very expensive TV adorns the wall. It is controlled by an equally expensive-looking boy toy doing its best not to remotely resemble a remote control. Like a mini space probe, this thing even has its own docking station. I am given the swiftest of demonstrations on how to use this entertainment motherboard which delivers all kind of in-room diversions from HDTV to Blu-ray. Then the friendly receptionist says it might be better if someone comes up to the room and shows me how to use it properly.

It’s a TV, I think, how hard can it be? I flip through the room information guide and sure enough, there are diagrams outlining how to use the touch screen gizmo. I follow the instructions to the letter. Does it work? No, nothing, nada, the screen stays black.

There are some who may marvel at this advanced level gadgetry but I can bet there are many, if not more, hotel guests like me who would happily make do with something a little less complicated if it means they can instantly satisfy their need for Sky News. I wouldn’t expect someone to come up and demonstrate how to flip the switch on the kettle or extol the virtues of the turbo setting on the hairdryer, so why the added hassle of dialling ‘0’ for the privilege of having a bit of fluff on in the background while I check emails or brush my teeth? It doesn’t matter how posh that screen is, it’s not going to make the X-Factor any less cringeworthy.

A Japanese motor manufacturer frequently uses the slogan: “Isn’t it great when things just work?” Personally, I couldn’t agree more.

Conference centres worldwide may well despair at news that Estonia’s government has earmarked 23 million EEK (€1.47 million) of European Regional Development Fund money towards attracting large not-for-profit conferences through 2010 and 2011. It’s a fairly large wodge of cash and signals the international race for large convention business has yet another contender.

Estonia is making no bones about its meetings ambitions: within the last couple of months Estonia has launched an ambassador programme in the country's main university city Tartu, and opened the new 1,830-person capacity Nokia Concert Hall in Tallinn. Now it will refund up to €64,000 to an event organiser able to serve up the requisite criteria – 300 overnight stays minimum over at least three days and some sight-seeing on the agenda – the formula being classy conferences attract more delegates and more delegate spend for the local economy.

Most destinations tend not to wear their subventions heart on their sleeves, citing competitive advantage. A recent discussion amongst UK destinations saw that while regional and city funding is attracting conventions (and often very nicely, thank you), they are loath to talk numbers – and the general consensus seems to be a national fund would be nice, but ultimately unworkable.

Certainly while it seems Team GB now understands the need for investing in major sports events for a tourism trade-off, you get the feeling conventions haven’t quite got the same sex appeal when it comes to stumping up the cash. It stands to be seen, therefore, whether large not-for-profit convention organisers will be wooed by the courting of cool Britannia versus a very, very eager Estonia.

One thing it does raise, however, is the fact that these “emerging” destinations are no longer content to be benign interlopers. Central and Eastern Europe, China, India and South America are all agitating for meetings and events business. The infrastructure is coming along and the intent is certainly there. In many cases all that's holding them back is a proven track record. Perhaps an initial brown envelope may be all the persuasion they need.

The meetings and incentive industry is one with a long list of doyens and stalwarts – no doubt due to the fantastic opportunities it provides for travelling, partying and general good fun in the name of work.
The ‘old boys’ have met so many times on the circuit they’re now good buddies as much as they are colleagues or competitors. This was no more evident than at the recent ICCA Congress in Florence, where the industry’s great and good enjoyed four full-on days of meeting, speaking and eating (and rather a lot of drinking too!).
But what was also evident was the large gap between the old-timers and the bright young things. We’re certainly not short of these either with talented X and Y-ers rapidly rising through the ranks, but somehow there is the feeling that they need galvanising.
If we are to be ready to take the helm as the senior generation finally head for their slippers and pipe we need to form a collective.
Those under 35 should be getting together on a regular basis to bond and share ideas about the future of the industry.
Of course we can learn much from the wisdom of our elders, but not all are keen on embracing new technology or ways of thinking and could, quite possibly, learn a thing or two from us.
We want to hear the voice of the young movers and shakers. If you feel the same and would be interested in forming a panel, please drop us a line.

I recently had the pleasure – and, yes, that word was carefully chosen, which surprises me more than you – of visiting Alton Towers Resort for the first time. Terrifying theme park rides and childish attractions aside, the most striking and cheering aspect of the venue was the friendliness of the staff.

In a pretty long career of visiting hotels, venues and attractions around the world, I have rarely been anywhere where the smiles, thoughtfulness and cheeriness of the staff was so consistent and welcoming – and certainly never in the UK. From teenagers standing in the freezing cold assisting on the rides to the more distinguished porters and even the busy waiting staff dealing with long queues and loads of kids – all were unremittingly warm and helpful.

It felt as though it was genuinely important to them that you had a good time – and how often do you feel that in the UK? The pricing was the same – it felt good value for good quality, another rarity in my book.

Perhaps there’s something in the water in Stoke-on-Trent that isn’t just great for lovely pottery?

In the November issue of M&IT, just published, industry doyen Peter Rand states: “it is the staff and not the facilities that can influence most the success or otherwise of an event.”

I can only therefore suggest that Alton Towers is well worth seeking out if it may fit the bill for an event you have coming up.

I am no expert on theme parks and a total wimp when it comes to anything other than toddler rides but Alton Towers struck me as a surprisingly nice place to be. The large grounds feel spacious with lakes and attractive gardens; the rides have clearly been cleverly designed to appeal to an enormous range of ages and levels of masochism – the names of some of the rides, Oblivion and Submission for instance, say it all; and the Alton Towers Hotel, where I stayed, was fun and comfortable. The food in the hotel’s Secret Garden restaurant was very good and the prices reasonable. And the band performing for the Saturday evening entertainment was also of surprisingly high quality. Although the choice of food in the park itself looked promising, the lunch we had was your average theme park muck – the only negative of the weekend.

And we didn’t have time to visit the spa, the hugely popular water park or the lovely Staffordshire countryside where the resort is situated. All in all, a thoroughly positive experience and with fast trains now taking 1.5 hours from London in to Stoke on Trent, it’s not as far to go for good service for us southerners as it sounds.

Local newspaper editors swear by a yardstick known as the ‘Cornflake Test' to assess whether a story is worth following up.

In a (crunchy) nutshell this means that if the story is likely to make you or your reader choke on their cornflakes while reading it, then you need to get out your notebook pronto and put in a few calls. And so it was that I nearly found myself speed dialling M&IT’s designated first aider when I read a press release from Visit London titled ‘London named as one of world’s most affordable destinations.’ Surely some mistake?

Perhaps not. Lonely Planet has placed the capital in the list of Best Value Destinations for 2010. The list isn’t ranked but London is deemed among the best buys for next year along with asset frozen Iceland, perennial cheapies Thailand and Mexico, South Africa, Malaysia, India, Bulgaria, Kenya and Las Vegas, where you can bet on a few rooms going spare in 2010.

The capital makes the list because accommodation and restaurant prices are between one third and one half cheaper than a few years ago with the exchange rate giving better value for overseas visitors. Sounds like great news, but perhaps not so much so for UK planners. The leisure guidebook publisher’s statement on why the capital was included adds the following caveat: “Long ludicrously expensive, London has become much more affordable for visitors from abroad, if not for its residents.”

Lonely Planet’s travel editor Tom Hall thinks London being named as a best value destination will raise a few eyebrows. “It may seem a surprising inclusion but as a direct result of the economic crisis London has become much more accessible to foreign visitors,” he says. “The tables have turned and London’s reputation as one of the world’s most expensive cities is over.”

So has London been named as one of the world’s most affordable destinations? I don’t think so. There’s a clear distinction between what is ‘most affordable’ and a destination which is ‘better value’ than in previous years. Just check out the room rate differentials between London and Bangkok.

You can’t blame the PR team at Visit London for spotting a chink of blue in an otherwise gloomy economic sky and using it as a stick (or should that be schtick?) to drum up business during EIBTM. It is, after all, what they are paid to do. Perhaps they could just spare a wee thought for us cereal crunching hacks.

It must be very difficult to be in a slow-moving business like real estate in fast-moving economic times like these. By the time you’ve had an idea, done the research, found a site/building, applied for planning, costed the project and made a decision, times have changed and so has the market. And there’s still a few years to build the thing, during which time anything can happen.

I don’t know if this explains London hotel development plans but certainly you could be excused for thinking current hotel development strategy is ‘so last year'.

There are currently 5,000 hotel rooms under construction in the capital plus another 19,000 in the planning stage. Some projects have understandably been put on ice during the cold climate but of the hotels planned to open before 2012, 40 per cent of the rooms will be in the five-star category while only 20 per cent will be in the budget category. Do they know something we don’t, or were these plans already more than a twinkle in the developers’ eyes before the ETA of the ‘crunch train’ was announced?

A report compiled by TRI Hospitality Consulting with Visit London called the London Hotel Development Monitor says the London hotel market has proved more resilient than expected. While some industry experts were anticipating rate reductions as high as 40 per cent, the report says there has been a much more modest reduction in the order of 9 per cent on average due to growth in the leisure sector that has compensated for a downturn in the corporate sector, not least because of the weak pound.

But the report doesn’t specify what has happened to rates in the five-star category. In some cases, these have dropped below four-star rates because the corporate sector has been prohibited from using luxury products, no matter how cheap they have become. And in our world of meetings and events, the corporate sector is terrified of being seen to meet in a champagne environment in these days of austerity.

The British Meetings & Events Industry survey asked 300 corporate organisers for their preferred venue types and only 10 per cent ticked the ‘luxury venue’ box while 60 per cent said the pressure to reduce costs was their biggest concern for the next 12 months. So who is going to fill these new five-star rooms?

Step forward our badly treated MPs who are no longer permitted to use taxpayers’ cash to fund a second home close to London. I’m sure a bit of five-star treatment is just what they need.

What is it that makes one brand cool and another naff? I suppose that’s a bit like asking what makes one person charismatic and another cringe-worthy. If we could capture these qualities, we’d all be millionaires. And it is, of course, what many very clever people in the events industry, among others, try to help brands achieve.

On a fam trip on the Cote d’Azur recently, Concorde Hotels & Resorts helped achieve a little more cool by association when it arranged for 40 Harley Davidson bikes and their owners to transfer a group of UK event organisers from the Hotel Martinez in Cannes to the Palais de la Mediterrannee in Nice. And it was fabulous!

There was a huge kerfuffle as the gleaming machines and their incredibly sexy riders pulled up outside the glamorous Hotel Martinez in the October sunshine. The group of event organisers was apprehensive as each one was paired off with a, mostly, grey-haired, wrinkled and immaculately-mannered, leather-clad French biker – almost all were men but there were a couple of seriously cool women bikers too.

What is it about these bikes and their riders that is just so, well, cool? Sure some people love cars, some love bikes, some love engines – but I have never been interested in any of them and I’m pretty certain there were many like me in this group. And yet everyone bar none loved it.

Concorde’s Mark Gorgon gave his view: “It’s to do with the passion. There was not a smear, a mark, a bit of dirt on one inch of any of those bikes. Their owners love them, take great care of them, are passionate about them. That’s what helps to make it so cool.”

Nothing to do with throbbing engines, leathers and the freedom of the open road, then?

One of the best things about the transfer – apart from the sunshine, the views of the glistening Mediterranean, the glittering coastal resorts, the beautiful villas and floating palaces – was the reception by the locals on the street going about their Saturday morning business. How did 99 per cent react to the not inconsiderable inconvenience, noise and smell of the passing show? By smiling, waving and pointing in sheer delight. See, loved by everyone, just incredibly cool.

Can men and women really be friends? It’s a pop psychological question which regularly features in cheesy romcoms and in the pages of the Daily Mail. But our chums at the Meeting Support Institute (www.meetingsupport.org), who are always on the lookout for scientific evidence to help organisers connect better with their delegates, have taken this one step further. They are asking whether it’s actually possible for men and women to sit in a round table session together and discuss conference topics without the attraction thing getting in the way.

The research behind these questions centres on hapless Dutch psychologist Johan Karremans, who found that he couldn’t remember his own address when an attractive lady asked him at the end of a conversation. The poor soul had been so busy trying to impress her that he found his brain had deserted him when asked the million dollar question.

Karremans decided to investigate the matter more closely (unfortunately the MSI don’t go into his methodology) and discovered he wasn’t alone - men can’t think straight after a conversation with a woman. And the prettier the woman, the stronger the effect. Apparently, this effect is not the same with women (although guests at M&IT’s MIMA Awards would probably beg to differ after seeing Axa Sun Life’s Patti Heaven snuggled up to the tall, dark award winner from Portugal).

Karremans thinks these results could go some way to explain why boys lag behind girls at school, a fact previously blamed on motivation and personality. And besides schools, he believes the effect is similar on the work floor. According to the research, chaps are exhausting themselves through too much multi-tasking. All that smooth talking and trying to make a good impression as well as watching a lovely's reactions can zap a poor chap's energy.

Earlier studies have found that like Kryptonite, different cognitive abilities draw from the same energy source. And the source can get empty, which becomes obvious when you have to perform cognitive work afterwards.

There is a simple cure for gibberishness brought on by chatting up beautiful women (whether at a conference or not). Research into ego-depletion - the boffin's term for brain drain - flags up a connection between glucose levels in the brain. Normal brain function can be restored by drinking or eating something sweet … pint anyone? Be warned, restoring your brain cells with several pints after conversing with a beautiful women might just result in a different problem - a severe case of beer goggles.

I have friends who think fam trips sound like incredibly glamorous affairs and, on one level, yes of course they are. You usually get very well fed, people are exceedingly nice to you, you get to see some fabulous new venues and, if you are lucky, the city outside. Heck, sometimes they will throw in a spa treatment to sweeten the deal. (Never mind the endless show rounds – while the canny are aware we do not want to see every style of room accommodation you have, it is surprising how many times I have traipsed from Presidential to Executive Twin.)

Never, though, have I been on a trip quite so glam as the recent Mazagan opening weekend. Expectations on the charter were high – it’s obvious Sol Kerzner knows how to throw a party. As I scan the plane, I spy an actress I am vaguely aware of, plus a whole lot of press. Not for this trip though the comforting riffraff collection of ageing hacks that are usually attendant on fam trips, those that prop up the bar late at night telling vaguely inappropriate stories. No, these are young beautiful types from glossies and red tops (some are wearing their sunglasses inside, natch) here in essence to celebrity style stalk and gather gossip. And there’s a smattering of events folks there, on their own programme.

There’s the odd clanger - the resort is so new you can forgive the bus driver missing the turn off, but they should really have sorted out the rooms before we got there. Staff are incredibly friendly and plentiful (one for every three or four guests I heard whispered) but seem a little overwhelmed by this first influx of (rather demanding) guests.

But otherwise it is an intriguing view into how the other half live – the Veuve Cliquot is splashed about with abandon, I end up dancing next to Yasmin Le Bon and Gerard Butler. Simon Le Bon tells me he likes my hat. The food is good, but only the journalists seem to be eating it (certainly not the famous folk).

The spa is fantastic (and fully booked), the impressive fireworks display smothered a little in their own bountiful smoke as they bounce around the elegant courtyard. I walk past a fashion shoot by the beach and the VIP girls taking belly dancing lessons by the pool. Apparently the events enquiries are rolling in and there is no doubt this is a lovely resort, early teething problems aside. I enjoyed the beautiful people, too, but bring back the hacks. Sure, you’d have to up the champagne order, but I missed having someone with cheaper shoes than me help me prop up the bar.

Not a great time to be a celeb, is it? The BBC has finally woken up to the idea that licence-payers don’t want quite so much of their money going to overpaid undesirables like Ross and Brand. Even Chris Evans has owned up to being a sufferer of Simon Dee syndrome (my words, not his) and the architect of his own fall from grace. Blimey, the ego has landed!

For those of us who live in the real world – and by that I mean those who get paid what we are worth by those with a responsible attitude to the owners of the cash they are paying us – the value placed on some of these people has always been a mystery. Those with a real and unusual talent will always command a high appearance fee because of their rarity but what Ross and Brand have in common is commonness itself, not something I feel we should pay an uncommon price for. I have always felt that we pay too little for our musicians and far too much for our ‘speakers’.

But I digress. There are those who like Ross and Brand, just as there are those who drink Black Tower Liebfraumilch and read The Sun, so I guess they’ll never be poor.

The celebrity who deigns to work with us on the ‘common’ corporate conference circuit is usually in the £10k-£15k bracket, much cheaper than the Rosses of this world but nonetheless expensive when viewed as just another line item on the budget. Some of the speaker agencies have been open about the need for their clients to take a pay cut in the current climate and the opportunity to negotiate more on fees now is certainly there. But how do you measure the return on investment for such a commodity?

We are all used to hearing ridiculous demands from celebs for expenses and refusals to rehearse in advance so we have put up with it in the past. But is this the tipping moment? Is this the time when we tell the celebrity speakers to wake up and smell the Veuve Cliquot? It would seem that is what the market is thinking. In the British Meetings & Events Industry Survey, 600 conference organisers were asked to list the items that contribute most to a successful event. 'Celebrity keynote presenters' was named as the least important of all by both corporate and association buyers. So it seems conference organisers are in agreement with BBC licence payers.

Interestingly, association planners thought food quality was five times more important than celebrity speakers!

So, what’s it to be, then? Jonathan Ross or another round of bacon butties? Pass the HP sauce…

The events industry should take its collective hat off to Concerto Group chairman Mike Kershaw. Despite critics claiming his ‘Say Thank You at Christmas’ campaign was just a ploy to drum up business for his own company, the message has really begun to permeate the public consciousness, benefitting all of us.

You may have seen his spot on the BBC News at Ten this week and the flurry of stories that followed in the press. Ironically the BBC announced it would not contribute toward staff Christmas parties but other firms, such as Lloyds Bank, have committed to go ahead, albeit with reduced budgets and promises to keep festivities ‘low-key’.

Lloyds will contribute £35 per head for its 60,000 employees but has banned senior managers from organising formal black-tie type events. And, following this week’s news, Outsourced Events has produced a guide on how to stage a Christmas party on a low budget. Tips include holding your event on a Monday (which is just what we are doing) when venue rates will be more reasonable, and booking through an agency to get the best deal. It also suggests scrapping expensive entertainment in favour of a fancy dress theme or quizzes and funny anecdotes.

It might sound like a cringe-worthy scene from The Office (I can see the David Brent-style dancing already) but if you can put your self-consciousness to one side, it really is quite fun.
At our annual party last year we staged a quick-fire topical quiz and a 'blind' wine-tasting challenge that got everyone helping/supporting/communicating/laughing.

This, really, is what the spirit of Christmas is all about – it’s not how much you spend, it’s just about coming together and celebrating the end of a particularly tough year.

You might be forgiven for thinking that in Reed Travel Exhibitions’ Richmond offices, there is a giant effigy of Ray Bloom, suspended above the desks, with pins sticking in every inch of the poor fellow’s anatomy. To put it mildly, the little man from IMEX is a big thorn in Reed’s side.

Twelve years ago Bloom sold his show EIBTM to Reed for a figure rumoured to be in excess of £10m. He and his sidekick Paul Flackett – who went to work for Reed for a time - signed rather short non-compete clauses. Bloom couldn’t sit still and dipped his toe in the coffee shop business but after his Good Bean Coffee company failed to cause a stir in the high street, he wisely sold it and went back to what he knows best – making exhibitors happy!

So he launched IMEX in Germany in 2003 with the support and the partnership of the German Convention Bureau and the rest, as they say, is history. IMEX has flourished and competed neck-and-neck with EIBTM and the RTE people would be the first to agree, Bloom has made things very competitive. And, every exhibitor would agree, the competition has been good for the market. Both shows are excellent.

Reed, of course, has size on its side but while Bloom is only a little chap, he’s big in the meetings business – in fact, he’s one of the biggest. His reputation alone may not counter Reed’s financial muscle, but his business is gaining strength and so is his balance sheet. He is obviously feeling confident or he wouldn’t have taken his latest tilt at the Reed windmill – the launch of IMEX America (see news section). This will take place in Las Vegas in October 2011, just four months after Reed’s own launch in the US market with AIBTM.

Reed had postponed its AIBTM launch for a year and in the interim Bloom took the chance to dash over to Nevada and gamble on the pulling power of Vegas for his show. The odds are that Bloom will continue to do what he has been doing these past six years and be a thorn in their sides on both sides of the Atlantic and Reed must be less than pleased.

While Ray is decidedly a coffee man, that effigy must now be looking like a proverbial Tetley tea bag – with lots of little perforations…

Why? Why do politicans do it? Preach to all and sundry about the importance of fiscal responsibility, prudence and accountability in these tough times, then wangle second home mortgages for distant relatives and squander money on extravagant duck ponds – all run up on the public tab.

Now, across the Channel, there’s news that French President Nicolas Sarkozy had a £250,000 luxury shower – with ‘surround sound radio’, no less - built in Paris’s Grand Palace for his use during a three-day EU summit. The really galling part is that, despite politics being a dirty game, he didn’t even use it.

Newspaper reports have it that “like most of the equipment bought for the £16m conference, it was disposed of soon afterwards”. The list goes on: 500 technicians mobilised every day, including 300 at night; £300,000 spent on the conference podium; £90,000 on carpet and £195,000 on gardens. The opening dinner cost £1m alone – that’s more than £23,000 for each of the 43 heads of state!

So, not only have Europe’s politicians conjured up a stick with which to beat themselves, they’ve indirectly opened up the events industry to the ire of ‘joe public’ with this re-occurrence of the much-maligned 'extravagant jolly'.

Of course, the EU Summit in itself was no doubt of integral importance and had to be staged in some way, shape or form. Yet in black and white, these figures do look ludicrous – it’s hard to build a concrete business case for “gardens" and, as for that shower, well that’s a joke that’s far from funny.

Give any of our event agencies keen for work right now a brief for a gala dinner for 43 with a fraction of that budget and see what kind of magic they could work. At a time when nearly everyone else under the sun is tightening their belts and sticking to the business end of events, politicians indulge in more highly publicised hypocrisy. It’s a shame all round.

Today’s announcement from Dolce could turn out to be the ‘bottom-Dollar’ tipping moment in the events sector’s recession. After all, you can’t get much lower than “name your price”. Unless venues start giving space away free.

Dolce Hotels & Resorts is challenging meeting planners to ‘name their price’ for meetings or events (for full details see www.meetpie.com/news). As part of the promotion, called ‘Make Us an Offer … Anything Goes’, organisers are invited to submit details of their event, including their preferred Dolce hotel, date, food and beverage, accommodation and other meeting requirements. Bookers can then state the price they would be willing to pay for the entire package.

Sounds like a great PR coup and a great conversation starter with a punter. But will it generate incremental business at a rate Dolce wants?

Peter Strebel, Dolce’s chief revenue officer, said: “The promotion puts buyers first in our pricing strategy, and makes it quick and easy for them to negotiate terms based on their present needs”.

Dolce, of course, is Italian for ‘sweet’. But all this reminds me of another Italian deal regularly proposed by the legendary Don Corleone in Mario Puzo’s The Godfather. It was: “I’m gonna make you an offer you can’t refuse….”

Hopefully there won’t be a horse’s head in the bed!

The best time to schedule an office meeting is at 3pm on a Tuesday, according to a new study. Keith Harris of online scheduling service When Is Good had the rather boring task of sifting through 100,000 responses to 34,000 meeting requests to come up with this golden hour of opportunity.

His conclusion is that meetings are powered by caffeine. "It's psychological - 3pm is coffee break time,” he explains, “People can see themselves talking over a coffee."

The 3pm Tuesday slot is based on the golden triangle of employee availability, motivation and willingness to participate, according to the survey. Plan a meeting any later and attendees’ minds will be fixed firmly on the clock.

Given the choice, most staff would rather spend their most productive hours outside of meetings. "Anecdotally, our users wanted to put off meetings until the last possible time. They want to reserve the morning for their own tasks," says Harris.

Monday mornings at 9am are a definite no-no but, surprisingly, many people were prepared to forego their lunch hour for chow down and chat with their colleagues. Harris says: "There was a slight dip [in acceptances], but people are prepared to work over lunch."

The BBC tested the theory by scheduling an online meeting for 3pm on Tuesday. In among the crumbs of information about various biscuit brands, participants tested the theory by giving their views on the optimal meeting time. Most suggested the 3pm time slot would only work if a cap was imposed on the length of the meeting to finish by 4pm.

Many thought meetings were better scheduled for 10-11am to give employees a break from their PCs and to avoid the post-lunch slump. You can’t please all of the people all of the time, as the saying goes, but you can try to bribe them with biscuits.

Or not, as the case may be. Maximum efficiency can be achieved by pulling away people’s chairs, according to one participant, Robin from Aberdeen. “Meetings for me are best at 10am and ideally should have no chairs, no drinks, stand up coffee bar type tables only and take less rather than more time. Oh yes - and if a slide show is planned - no more than three slides.”

Somehow, an idea that’s rather more appealing than weak coffee and budget biscuits.

Most of us can say we have sat through a meeting that was a bit of a damp squib. Spare a thought, however, for the government of the Maldives who recently held the world’s first official underwater cabinet meeting. That’s right, completely submerged, five metres underwater, in scuba gear.

As political meeting photo opportunities go it ranks far above baby kissing at the podium, with a bunch of snorkeling journalists providing footage that captured the attention of media around the world.

And as meetings go, the logistics were pretty intense. Not only did each minister have to learn how to dive (two begged off for medical reasons) they were each accompanied by a diving instructor and a military minder.

Forget coffee breaks and PowerPoint. During the half-hour meeting on the sea-bed ministers communicated with white boards and hand signals – not perhaps the easiest form of group communication, and certainly not a forum for raising new business for discussion.

However, as an exercise in highlighting the threat of global-warming to the low-lying Indian Ocean nation, it did make the point rather emphatically.

During the meeting President Mohamed Nasheed and his cabinet signed a document calling for global cuts in carbon emissions ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December. Standing only an average of 2.1 metres (7ft) above sea level, the government says the Maldives faces being wiped out if oceans rise.

At a later press conference while still in the water, President Nasheed was asked what would happen if the summit fails. "We are going to die."

It seems unlikely the underwater meeting will take off as a concept – but let’s hope the message survives.

Let me start by thanking all those who supported our efforts to persuade Eventia’s board of directors to take the decision they have – to move their awards dinner to a more sensible date in the calendar. It will no longer conflict and compete with the older established M&IT Industry Awards. Many wrote to the Eventia board with their views and a goodly number took the time to make their feelings known on the blog below. Many thanks to all of you – there were very few who didn’t support our campaign. Many thanks, too, to the Eventia board members who made a sensible and brave decision.

Let me also say that I am sure nobody on the elected board of Eventia ever wanted to damage our awards dinner by staging their event within six working days of ours – indeed many of them are kind enough to sponsor the M&IT Industry Awards. In trade associations, life is like this - things get moved along like a glass in a séance and nobody is really sure who is doing the pushing or the pulling. Things take on a life of their own and are nodded through without much question by a board of directors who usually have more pressing matters on their minds.

But there is a delicious irony in the circumstances that I believe drove this situation. At a time when corporate event organisers (and even some association sector planners) are demanding more transparency and more value from their service providers, Eventia was being (er, how shall I put this?), extremely relaxed about its relationship with a third party supplier.

When Eventia conceded management and control of its biggest event to publishers Haymarket, it forgot to impose the checks and balances that every corporate client imposes on its supply chain. That’s where the irony lies. Haymarket took full advantage of the situation and used Eventia’s main event as a cudgel with which to beat one of its rivals. By moving the date ever closer to the M&IT Industry Awards, Haymarket created conflict between Eventia and M&IT – because they could.

I suspect Eventia’s board has learned from this and will seek to take back control and ownership of all its activities. I suspect it might also look a lot closer at the political objectives of its partners in future. It could be that the elected Eventia board’s only fault has been naivete. I hope that in future we can look to Eventia to be even-handed, open and transparent in its relationships with third parties and to go out for tender for every project. I also hope we can look to the board to be eagle-eyed, cynical and more suspicious of those it appoints.

I take my hat off to those who serve Eventia as voluntary board members, but they need to recognise that every decision they make involves our (members’) money and they need to be very pernickety about how and by whom it is being spent.

Trade associations are, by definition, political organisations. Don’t misunderstand me, I am not talking big party dogma here. I am talking small ‘p’ political. Associations need to be hugely sensitive to the politics of the day because they are answerable to their members. In many ways they are more answerable to stakeholders than a public company is to its shareholders in that every association member should be viewed as an equal shareholder with an equal voice.

Their leaders need to recognise that they occupy political positions in which their every move and decision will be held up to careful scrutiny. Likewise with their public behaviour.
They also need to be viewed as neutral and even-handed in the way they deal with their marketplaces. Sponsors, trade press and others need careful handling to keep them of a friendly disposition because they are heavily relied upon to provide funding and oxygen for a not-for-profit organisation.

It is a given that associations need to work with all the trade show organisers to ensure they maximise their presence at them and it’s obvious they should work with all the press – including the trade press – in an even-handed way. This should include being seen to go through a professional and open tender process before entering into commercial agreements with third parties.

So why do those who run one of our industry associations, Eventia, fail to understand any of this? Eventia seems to make decisions on the fly at the last minute without detailed internal consultations, let alone external debate with the industry. While it claims to represent the interests of the industry, it regularly operates in a way that is at odds with the interests of some of its members and the industry at large. So long as a decision feeds its parlous finances in the short term (or, seems as if it might), Eventia formulates new plans seemingly with a lack of forethought.

For example, why would Eventia decide to stage its annual awards dinner just 10 days before the M&IT Industry Awards (which has occupied the same slot for 22 years and has raised more than £700,000 for Save The Children)?

Why would Eventia also decide (without consulting us) to duplicate our award categories and add them to their event?

In short, why would Eventia enter into competition with Meetings & Incentive Travel magazine (a member of Eventia) and our charity awards dinner?

And when we wrote to draw this to their attention, why would they take a month to respond and then tell us “it’s too late”? Is this a conscious and aggressively competitive move? Or is it just sheer incompetence?

Can it really be true that Eventia (‘The Voice of the Events Industry’) is incapable of finding a venue for 500 people on a date more than 10 days apart from an event competing for the same sponsors and audience in the middle of a recession when most venues are screaming for business?

Surely not. Or is there another agenda?

Forget turkey, brussel sprouts and mince pies – this Christmas sees a whole host of unusual dishes added to the standard festive menu.

Paris-based Nomad Food and Design is introducing the UK to molecular and espuma gastronomy. "What the roast potato is that?" I hear you ask.

Molecular dishes are ‘cooked’ using a freezing pool of liquid nitrogen. Concoctions include salmon with cream and pea mint and frozen balls of tangy lemon meringue pie, and guests are treated to additional theatrics when food is dipped in the nitrogen emitting a witch’s cauldron-like spew of white smoke.

Meanwhile, the fresh ‘espuma’ dishes, which can be savoury or sweet, are sprayed with edible perfume and include foie gras with confit fig and pineapple and lychee jelly.

Not to be outdone, The Brewery in London has launched an experimental menu of its own.

The £95 ‘X-treme menu’ dares delegates to try grilled alligator tail steak with lobster and asparagus, lemon cured sea gherkin with tempura wild oyster and moose cheese soufflé with rowanberry clear jelly.

I must confess to not being too tempted myself but certainly this culinary creativeness should be celebrated!

Heading on my way to a meeting in London yesterday, I was greeted by the usual barrage of excuses, aka tannoy announcements, at London Victoria. There were apologies for tardy trains, warnings over perilous platforms, drenched dailies, soggy sandwiches etc, etc.

These horrible happenings were apparently caused by “adverse weather conditions.” Had a hurricane befallen the capital, an electrical storm perhaps or even heavy snowfall?

The meterological marvel causing the disruption and making po-faced commuters look even more miserable than usual was a bit of rain. Granted it had been the driest September since God-knows-when but how has any of this come as a surprise? Has our transport network, in its piecemeal entirety, gone completely off the rails? This is Britain, it rains, a lot.

Station sillyness aside, people do like to take the train to meetings. A completely unscientific poll in this office (for we are delegates too) confirmed this. And of those asked “what’s the best way to get to Paris?,” Eurostar was the favoured option for being relatively hassle free.

Having your delegates travel by rail seems to be a rapidly diminishing option for meeting planners and it seems there might be fewer and fewer opportunities in the future.

In the run up to the 2014 Commonwealth Games, a £120m rail link between Glasgow airport and the city centre has hit the buffers and in London, neither Labour nor the Tories seem to know exactly how to stump up the £16bn needed to get Crossrail off the sidings. A business levy has been proposed by Gordon Brown for an as yet undisclosed proportion of that amount, but, for the rest, it’s a case of mind the gap.

Last month’s survey by the Institute of Travel & Meetings (ITM) predicted that business travel would fall by 30 per cent over the next few years. Environmental concerns and the rise of video conferencing were cited as reasons for the decline.

Taking the train could satisfy the need to meet face to face and put a tick in the environmental concerns box, but in these difficult times, it seems there’s an imbalance between saving the planet and achieving budget. Of those polled, 60 per cent of ITM members thought rail prices would have to fall by at least 10 per cent (25 per cent said 50 per cent) before business travellers could be attracted in large numbers.

Perhaps it’s time for the meetings industry to come up with a new campaign … 'Keep Britain Moving to Keep Britain Talking'

Why don’t more event organisers use Madrid? It may not have won over the decision-makers on the International Olympic Committee, but I’ve just returned from the Spanish capital seduced by its attractions.

Frequent and fast flights from all over Europe, two hours from London, an airport 15 minutes from the city centre; a professional and active convention bureau; fabulous food; funky bars; loads of hotels; impressive meeting facilities; extraordinary rates and enough breathtaking history and art to fill the itinerary of even the most high-brow delegate.

The convention bureau’s charismatic director Alessandro Sansa explains: “Everything you want is here: history, art, architecture, gastronomy, fashion, culture, shopping. You name it, Madrid has it. But there is usually a European city that does it better: we are not the best for art, gastronomy or shopping but our offer is very good. Madrid comes in second or third in everything. But there is no other city that offers it all and offers it cheaper.”

They don’t want to shout about it but Madrid, like many cities, has been maintaining occupancy by lowering rates during the recent downturn. With the city offering so many hotels including several stylish new five-stars, competition is fierce. It has been possible to get a five-star bedroom for not much more than 100 euros for much of the past year - phenomenal value for such high quality.

And as Alessandro is keen to point out, the city’s main attraction is its people. He puts its energy and spirit down to the open-mindedness that comes with having 49 per cent of its nearly 4m population not born in the city.

Its infrastructure may have been transformed in the last 20 years thanks mainly to huge investment from the EU but it still feels like – that increasingly rare thing - a foreign city to its visitors. With our increasingly homogenous world, this is a real treat. Madrid has wide, tree-lined boulevards packed with traffic; architecturally interesting buildings both historic palaces and modern gleaming towers; the restaurants don’t open until 9pm and you can smoke in many of its bars still, including the new and trendy ones. There are stylish grandparents taking coffee in boutique hotels and mixed age groups in most restaurants and bars – as used to be the case in so much of Europe before everything seemed to become divided on the basis of age. Madrid just feels very Spanish. And the Brits have always loved that.

It is a city waiting to be discovered by more of the events industry and while everyone is still buying on price, it really should be on everybody’s destination list.

I’m just back from Majorca. Why? Because industry guru Dave Hackett invited me to his 60th birthday bash. It was typical Hackett – there was no pomp, no self aggrandisement – just a good, old-fashioned knees-up with chicken and chips and a 60s theme fancy dress ‘do’. True, it was a nice hotel – but nothing flash. Even the karaoke was remarkably awful! And as he always does, he eschewed the champagne and drank beer.

More than 100 folk flew out to the island at Hackett’s behest and we were all hosted for the weekend and wined and dined on the beach at the Europe Playa Marina, Illetas - a typically generous invitation from a man who was one of the architects of the motivational events industry in the UK with the creation of his agency The Travel Organisation (now part of BI Worldwide) in the ‘80s.

Who else was there? Family, of course, but also an extraordinary line-up from the friends he has made in this business, including even some of his competitors! There were former colleagues, former employees, ex-business partners, suppliers and ex-clients who have remained in his huge circle of mates. Even his ex-wife was there.

Why was I there? Because in the 20-odd years I have known Hackett, I have called on him for his involvement and support for dozens of activities and projects – all unpaid and unrewarded. In that time he has never once refused a request for help.

Through his company he has sponsored every one of the Meetings & Incentive Travel Industry Awards Dinners in the past 22 years and every year he has sidled up to me and thrust an extra cheque in my pocket for Save The Children. He has never asked for recognition for him or his organisation for this – in fact, he always insisted he didn’t get any.

So when the invitation came, it was clear I had to be there. A knees-up it might have been, but Hackett the event organiser of course ensured everything was done properly. His wife Sharon McDonough, former operations director of TMO, organised the event with military precision from inspection visits to conclusion and to take the stress out of it on-site, he employed the services of Angie Mason’s company Absolute Corporate Events. How did he do that? By bidding for their services on the M&IT online Charity Auction in aid of Save The Children earlier this year, of course. So he got his birthday party managed on the day by another professional and a charity benefited. Typically Hackett, typically generous and typically he didn’t tell us at M&IT.

But if the event was purposefully down-to-earth and without affectation, Hackett couldn’t resist adding a room gift for all guests: it was a pack of bathroom amenities, each item branded with the party slogan “Growing old (dis)gracefully”.

Nice one, Dave!

Having trouble persuading clients to confirm their Christmas parties? A new survey by Outsourced Events highlighting the false economy of axing the festive shindig might just help you nail down that booking.

According to the 200 employees questioned, if they don’t get their annual jolly they’ll be mightily pissed off – or words to that effect.

They don’t give two hoots about the recession, that’s no excuse for cancelling Christmas, and they won’t be placated with drinks and vol-au-vents at the boss’ house either (just 3.5 per cent think this is a good substitute).

85 per cent believe a Christmas party is essential for staff morale and more than 55 per cent expect their company to shell out at least £31 per head to provide a full bells and whistles celebration.

However, if there really is no money in the kitty come the end of the year, most employees (38 per cent) would be happy with an extra day off, while 29 per cent would make do with a team lunch.

The survey should make good ammunition for event professionals who’ve understood this all along. However, M&IT has heard of some prominent industry organisations who will not themselves be holding official celebrations.

Rule 101 in business: practise what you preach! How can we possibly persuade others of the importance of our industry if we choose to eschew company events ourselves?

It’s one thing to appear a Grinch, but quite another to appear a hypocrite.

There are now only 148 Fridays to go until the Olympic Games. It’s a slightly terrifying thought for any busy person to see time flying away at such speed – more so organisers at LOCOG and the ODA. Admittedly, venues have been springing up out of the ground with more haste than may have been initially imagined in the post-win brouhaha that saw many claiming that London could never pull it off.

And the key to success for the venues for the Games, according to LOCOG chief executive Paul Deighton? “No white elephants”. That is, building in a sustainable way and not building anything that will not bring a legacy – which means, in a lot of cases, building on what we’ve already got.

It’s interesting to note that London’s own former white elephant done-good has been forced to change its moniker by the behemoth that is the 2012 machine. The O2 Arena, for all Olympic purposes will be known as NGA1 (that’s North Greenwich Arena 1 to you and I), given its namesake company is rival to major Olympic sponsor BT.

But names aside, the Olympics “overlay and operations” phase at existing venues is a blueprint in the fine art of event management.

Take, for example, multi-event hosting venue ExCeL. As Mike McNicholas, project director for London 2012, Atkins, says, that will necessitate the creation of five different 'microclimates' for different sports within ExCeL alone – and on a purely technical level, that means individual acoustic demands, airflow, temperature, lighting and power generation for each. Add on to that the next layer of pedestrian traffic flow, seating and staggered events to ensure most efficient use of the DLR system and you begin to see the enormity of the task well before the minutiae of dressing and niceties even begins.

Intriguing too will be the transformation of the grand Horse Guards parade into the beach volleyball venue – additional seats, 5,000 tonnes of sand, plus the technical issues of generating enough power at the listed building – not to mention security and potential noise issues for some very well-known local residents.

As Alison Nimmo, director of design and regeneration for ODA at the Olympic Park, says: “This is a fantastic moment for British industry to show how clever we are.”

Now that the word conference has somehow become a dirty word synonymous with ‘going on a jolly’ and years of greed and excess, spare a thought for the Labour staff currently holed up in glorious Brighton.

With the cash-strapped party now looking to make savings anywhere it can, party workers have been asked to shack up with one another so they can get to know their colleagues’ bathroom routines and unique footwear odours a little better. As yet, it’s one to a bed, but if the Party triumphs at next year’s election and Labour’s fortunes continue to dwindle, staff could find themselves topping and tailing at the next party conference.

I heard a similar tale of woe from a friend of mine who works for a bank which has benefitted from a hefty goverment bailout. At a regional management meeting my early-to-bed friend found herself sharing her less than three-star room with a party-all-night type. The twain had met on a couple of previous occasions but, as roomshares go, it wasn’t a match made in heaven.

To add insult to the injury of being woken up in the early hours, my banker friend had to pay for her own canteen meals during the meeting. On the only evening meal with subsidised sustenance, the group were each allowed one tax-payer-funded glass of wine and were told by the bosses that they had to “pretend to be a group of friends out for the night” in spite of having to ask for receipts so they could claim expenses. Pharma conferences sound like a party in comparision.

If the credit crunch means roomshares are on the rise, how do you ensure you match delegates up with like-minded partners? Will delegates be given the opportunity to ‘speed date’ potential room-mates online at registration if they need to find a workable match?

No doubt, room sharing achieves savings, but at a massive cost. Planners would have to be miracle workers to ensure that the message of the meeting isn’t drowned out by a night punctuated by the drone of another delegate’s snoring.

“I would not be surprised to see a return to growth in the capital ahead of quarter four of 2010.”

That’s the most positive message I have heard for a while (leaving aside, of course, our Mr Darling, current resident of Cloud Cuckooland, somewhere in Brighton – but who listens to him?)
No, it came from someone with feet rather better connected with planet earth - Mr Marvin Rust, hospitality managing partner at Deloitte.

He suggests growth may come earlier than the last quarter of 2010 - presumably in quarter three (see news section), although by not specifying which quarter, he is leaving the door open for quarter two to carry us out of the gloom and blinking into the bright light of a new dawn. Then he’ll be able to say: “I told you so.”

Let’s hope he’s right. But even if he isn’t, he has an important message to give us. In Deloitte’s latest report, Mr Rust says room revenues will continue to decline in 2009 but start to grow again in 2010 with year-end 2010 revpar (revenue per available room) growth of 5.1 per cent. His message is clear, the rates have dropped and they will bottom out at Christmas and start to grow again in the first quarter. Coincidentally, one of Mr Darling’s follies – the reduction in VAT to 15 per cent – also comes to an end on January 1. So there will be a need for hoteliers and other meeting venues either to swallow the increased levy and cough up an additional slice of their margin to the government or pass on the cost. I think we all know which it will be.

So if rates are going up by 5 per cent plus the VAT increase, you’d better do your negotiating now and get your dates in the diary and your rates in the can. Or even pull the dates of the event forward. It looks like we’ve had the rate-slashing period, and the smart buyer will do the deals for 2010 in the next couple of months or face rising costs. As December approaches it might become a question of who blinks first.

Feeling lucky?

Mark Denton’s enthralling tale of skippering a yacht around the world as part of the 2001 BT Global Challenge yacht race was one highlight of many at Venues Event Management’s 20th anniversary celebrations.

Venues Event Management held a Recognition Dinner to mark 20 years in business and to thank its clients for their support over that time. With around 140 guests making their way to Norton Park, a Q hotel close to Winchester, around 90 of them were clients who found the time to spend the evening with the team.

From immaculate organisation leading up to the event, which included asking guests to provide not only a pic for the Who’s Who book provided on the night but also an ‘interesting fact’ about themselves, to a waiter standing outside each guest’s bedroom door as they arrived offering local beer, champagne or fruit juice, it was all you’d expect from an award-winning event organising company. (They won Gold award for Best Event Management Company more than 40 employees at this year’s M&IT Awards dinner.)

If there was any criticism, it was that the evening was a little too long. But even that seemed a bit rich when so many kept the bar open until the small hours. Other highlights of the evening included an entertaining stint by Colin Nell of Sports Talent with an impressive display of footballing footwork. Colin has appeared in videos, ads and feature films and even boasted of teaching David Beckham and Steven Gerrard some of his freestyle football tricks. Four more handsome men hit the floor in the form of Figaro, whose powerful voices took command of the room as they entertained the largely female audience with their popular classics.

But for those that know Anita and Chris Lowe, the founders of the company, the most touching moment was when Anita was presented with a ‘This is your life’ book put together by staff with collusion from Anita’s mum, who had provided some delightful family snaps of Anita growing up.

“She’s absolutely terrifying,” trembled one male guest of a certain age, talking about Anita. “But that’s terribly attractive.”

Whether that’s true or not, the company has clearly built up a lot of trust, respect and warmth from its clients in the last couple of decades. And with Venues' client and strategic project manager Vicky Gardner reporting a quadrupling of enquiries in the last three/four weeks, let's hope it's an equally successful next 20 years.

Return on investment guru Elling Hamso is aghast, hands waving wildly: latest results of the British Meetings and Events Industry Survey has posited his beloved ROI as only 8th in the list of major concerns for event organisers for the next 12 months.

Most pressing for organisers are, somewhat unsurprisingly, reduced budgets followed by venues' cancellation policies. Hamso notes with interest that “producing interesting events with relevant content to the audience” is in at a respectable third: “But how do they know what content to include if they haven’t set the right objectives in the first place?” he asks me. “And how do they know it is relevant to the audience if they don’t do some form of evaluation? We need an antidote!”

As Hamso cribs from Alice in Wonderland: “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up somewhere else.” But ROI is not simply about reaching that “magic number”, he adds, the total “value” of an event (though, admittedly, this can be very useful, particularly if you are trying to justify an event’s existence). It is the ability to show a change in delegates’ learning, or in their values and attitudes towards a concept or a brand, Hamso says. It is not just about the new relationships built from the event itself, but what happens as a consequence of them; it’s how they apply the new skills they have learnt.

It is so much more than whether people enjoyed the catering or the speakers, found the chairs comfy enough, he rails. He spends an entire day taking more than a dozen key corporate event organisers and agencies through the Return on Investment methodology – the pyramid, the case studies and, after yet more discussion on conversion of results into figures, we are all believers.

So do we all go back to the office, raring for some ROI action? Might it sound, to our uninitiated colleagues, a little complicated, a little (whisper it now) costly?

“No, don’t say ‘Let’s use the ROI Methodology’ – that’s suicide,” he counters. “Let’s just sneak it in using common sense questions –What’s the value you want from the event? What do you want the delegates to do as a result of it? Why don’t they do this already?”

Return on Investment? Perhaps it’s the connotations that see it languishing at eighth. Common sense? Now there’s something everyone will be happy to embrace.

Conference Aston has banned staff from using the internal email system to exchange information with each other for the duration of National Meetings Week’s Keep Britain Talking Campaign. They’ll also receive a wrap over the knuckles if they use other communication methods which keep bums firmly on seats and fingers on keyboards such as Tweeting and Facebook.

Instead, staff at the central Birmingham venue will be using the old-fashioned, tried and tested formula of talking to colleagues face to face or picking up the blower.

It’s a simple gesture, but venue spokesman Paul Bunce, said the measure highlights a serious point. “In the hi-tech age of instant electronic communication, emails and twitter, there is a danger of interpersonal skills deteriorating in business. This week we’re asking everyone to use their feet, not the phone. What business needs right now is more face time, and less Facebook. People should be talking – and listening more.”

While colleagues at Conference Aston will be concentrating on serious matters of quality communication and personal interaction between colleagues, M&IT has thought of some other reasons why it’s good to talk.

- walking across the office gets you closer to the hallowed 10,000 steps a day, which will leave you bouncing with vitality (probably)

- you get to gawp at photos of your colleagues' nearest and dearest

- the end to that sinking feeling you get when you realise you pressed ‘reply to all,’ when you really meant to hit ‘reply’

National Meetings Week starts today. This is the awareness campaign M&IT magazine launched and used to drive. It is now co-ordinated by VisitBritain and aims to give the industry some oxygen in the big wide world.

‘Keep Britain Talking’ is the theme this year and it is clear the meetings and events industry received more publicity in 2009 than it ever did before – but for all the wrong reasons.

Only the bankers got a worse press than our industry in 2009 and for the supply chain it turned out to be a double disaster. It wasn’t enough that business dried up across most sectors, our industry was portrayed as some kind of pointless junket supermarket where fat cats entertain bonus bandits, rather than a legitimate and important communications business that powers economies around the world.

The biggest problem is the fragmentation of our industry with too many weak trade associations paddling their own canoes, as a result of which we have no united voice. Business tourism employs twice as many people as agriculture in the UK but you won’t hear politicians discussing subsidies for conference centres. What we need is an economic impact study that demonstrates the true overall value of the meetings and events industry. Until that happens we won’t be taken seriously.

National Meetings Week is a great project but it alone cannot balance the PR deficit in the events industry’s balance sheet.

Purveyors of performance improvement and motivation activities spend their lives trying to convince business leaders of the value of a happy workforce. “Wine-tasting in Provence is much more than just a jolly”, they shriek, “it facilitates team-building, inspires company loyalty and probably aids world peace!”

Their cries have gone mostly unheard during the last year as we all bear the brunt of those greedy bankers and their lavish Romanesque orgy banquets.

However, a tragic story which emerged this week might just make the world sit up and take notice. According to the Times, there have been 23 suicides and 13 attempted suicides at French telecommunications company France Télécom since February last year.

Unions are blaming the deaths on stress caused by restructuring and the French Government has now summoned the company’s chief executive to a crisis meeting.

The action comes after a 32-year-old woman jumped out of a window following a meeting to discuss the reorganisation of her department. Days earlier a technician stabbed himself during a meeting at which he was told to take up a new post.

An employee in Marseilles who killed himself in July left a note blaming “overwork, stress, absence of training and total disorganisation in the company. I’m a wreck, it’s better to end it all,” he wrote.

While this case is extreme, it does highlight how problems in the workplace can spread like a nasty disease. It also illustrates how serious its affects can be.

If this situation could have been prevented by some of our industry’s professionals helping senior management communicate with their team about managing change in the workplace, for instance, no one could argue that wasn’t money very well spent.

Is your workforce ‘gen-blending’? If you’ve just got to grips with communicating with Generation Y then here’s another communications concept to get to grips with. This bold new addition to the management-speak lexicon actually refers to something akin to good old-fashioned common and business sense.

Rather than using different tools to communicate with the Baby Boomers, Generation X and Generation Y, ‘gen-blending’ is a way of reaching a workforce more finely honed for optimal performance in these gloomy times. The recipe for the perfect gen-blended workforce is thus: take a pinch of expertise, add youthful enthusiasm and dish up with a dollop of “time based experience”.

‘Gen-blending’ as it is known, appears to have started in the US (where else?) according to the Financial Times, with companies such as Wal-Mart and Time Warner holding multi-generational workforce meetings to speed up the transfer of knowledge.

The idea goes a little something like this: the young folk teach the seniors technical skills such as blogging and Twittering, while the oldies get to mentor the youngsters and learn about the values and behaviour of the ‘yoof’ of today so they can flog them more stuff.

The result? No hiding in the corner at meetings. All employees – from Kevin the teenager to the senior executive who is hanging on in there longer than planned because there’s a recession on, are equally expected to make a contribution to the collective brainstorm. Burning issues are radically solved, staff are “re-energised.”

Generation Y, as regular M&IT readers will have read, will always want their say. They want information served up in small fruity chunks, they want to learn, but they can’t be bothered with mindless repetitive tasks. ‘Gen-blending,’ trumpets the FT, is a way to solve an endemic problem, that of the “senior people who’ve been around forever and think they know it all.” Generation X (workers born in the 1960s and 1970s) are obviously drily plodding away in the background. The only vaguely noteworthy thing the FT can say about this dull lot is that they are “in the middle of their careers.”

So that’s gen-blending in a nutshell, but don’t say it too quickly people might think you’re going on about something completely different.

Send your top ‘gen-blending’ tips to kelton@cat-publications.com

Most of us in the 300-strong audience at the Hotel Booking Agents Association Forum last week were alternately bemused and confused and occasionally enlightened - but none of us could help but be impressed by the presentation given by Konstanze Auernheimer, director of marketing for STR Global.

Now there’s a young lady who made me feel innumerate and linguistically inept! She mesmerised us with data showing the world’s venue demand, occupancy and room rates by continent, by country, by year, by month, by line graph, by bar chart and (by golly) in perfect English – and all at about 300 kilometres an hour.

She showed us that if you want to know what is happening with venue occupancy, check out the GDP figures – they usually line up. And if you want to know what is going to happen in the future, check out airline industry estimates – most of the punters arrive out of the air, after all.

She said modestly: “At the moment it’s a bit of a guessing game.” But then she gave us some statistics and built her extrapolations with logical arguments. The bottom line was: rates in the UK will stay soft until quarter three and four in 2010 when London will lead a recovery. Until then the weak pound will keep leisure traffic in good shape but business tourism will stay down and value will stay high. But she pointed out that the UK is doing better than most European destinations with average rates and occupancy only down by 12 per cent when Spain is down 25 per cent.

She added: “At the moment London is ‘happy days’ - prices used to be twice as high in London than in Germany but now it is cheaper here.”

“Happy days?” And they say they don't have a sense of humour...

Don’t expect to end your business meeting by sealing the deal with a handshake if you are working with anyone affiliated with The Association of Corporate Travel Executives (ACTE).

Its global membership has been warned to temporarily suspend the “timeless tradition that is the basis of greetings and agreements in western civilisation - the handshake - until the H1N1 influenza virus threat has been reduced to the status of the common cold”.

ACTE executive director Susan Gurley has said: “While it is a sad reality that influenza of any type is accompanied by fatalities, I don’t want the business travel industry to be the first one.”

As Gurley says, the public has been told to direct coughs or sneezes that cannot be caught in a handkerchief “into a cuff or sleeve”.

“I find it highly unlikely that executives will risk soiling their business suits while on the way to an important business meeting,” she adds, and you would hope so too. I’m not sure a phlegmy sleeve would send the right signals (nor be particularly hygienic, either).

It could, however, result in a slightly awkward situation if someone uninitiated to the ban approaches at a business event. I would suggest that the events industry's favourite greeting, the very European kissing of cheeks, would be a big no-no too. More preferable, perhaps, could be bowing, as in Japan. Saluting may well give the wrong message and waving is perhaps a little too informal.

While the Stateside furore may seem a little belated on this side of the Atlantic, it is worth remembering H1N1’s ability to cause massive disruption to business and travel.

Possibly slightly hysterical statistics quoted in the ACTE release this week suggest H1N1 could result in “30,000 to 90,000 fatalities, and the potential of 1.8 million patients overwhelming hospitals within a six week period - in the US alone.” Statistics, no doubt, that could perhaps be capitalised upon by any purveyors of virtual conferencing technology – the ultimate in touch-free meetings.

In the meantime Gurley recommends carrying a small bottle of hand sanitiser and a packet of tissues, which would seem, to me, to steer a far more sensible course.

The opening up of Eastern Europe to the meetings and incentive market has greatly enriched the destination pool. Groups can now spa in Slovenia, party in Poland and lux-out in Latvia, but although the fancy hotels and high-tech conference centres now exist, sometimes – just sometimes – the destinations need a helping hand with hospitality techniques.

One agency top bod shared with me his experience of trying to bring a large piece of business to a new hotel in Croatia.
What he was offering was a 90-day event, utilising thousands of room nights and worth in the region of £5m. One would imagine the hotel’s general manager would prostrate himself in order to win the business, giving the organiser the complete red carpet treatment.

But it appears that’s not the Croatian way: our organiser was asked to attend on a group fam, placed in a bog standard room when all the suites were free and didn’t once get to meet the GM. In fact the GM openly snubbed the group by asking the hotel’s sales manager to have a private drink with him rather than join them at a local bar.

Needless to say the hotel was not successful in winning what others would have regarded as the deal of the decade for a recently opened property.

“I just think they’re not quite ready yet,” says our overly-generous organiser.

Bloody foolish, I say.

A slap on the back to Torquay’s Riviera International Conference Centre for holding its monthly management meeting in a hot air balloon in support of VisitBritain’s campaign to Keep Britain Talking. A fine example of 'blue sky thinking' (see what they’ve done there?) and a nice publicity stunt to draw attention to the upcoming National Meetings Week (21 – 25 September 2009).

The ten delegates involved in the management meeting were taken to great heights (400ft above the RICC, though admittedly the balloon, Torquay’s Hi-Flyer, was still tethered to the ground). As RICC managing director Barry Cole said: “It was a great experience, and was probably the funniest (and possibly the shortest) management meeting we have ever held.”

Short, sharp AND fun – now there’s a combination for a management meeting. Add in a bit of ROI on its success and get that out into the public arena and we may be forced far less often as an industry to defend our corner (and our existence).

Keep Britain Talking encourages businesses in the UK to keep communicating through meetings and events, and also to support the UK meetings industry by holding those events in the UK.

Others are getting into the swing of things: Malmaison and Hotel Du Vin are hosting a series of events across the UK, while Experience Nottinghamshire and De Vere are on a push to encourage meetings.

Meanwhile, the new Visit London Big Event Bus leaves Paddington on September 21. The team will be holding meetings on board the bus and stopping along the way to promote the importance of meetings ahead of reaching final destination Event UK (22-23 September)at the NEC in Birmingham.

It’s obviously a campaign finding traction within our industry, but then we all know why meetings and events are important.

What we can hope for with this campaign is that the word spreads among the wider business community that meetings and events support the economy, individual business growth and are the breeding ground for innovation, inspiration, motivation and business success. Ultimately it is these corporates, associations and NFPs who need to fly the flag (or balloon) in support of our industry and show why meetings are important to them. With the public keen to pounce on any whiff of puffery or hot air these days, singing our own praises just isn’t enough.

They say a picture paints a thousand words, but I’m not quite sure what an image of a teenage mutant ninja turtle says. Apart from “cowabunga”. Yet this was one facet of a painting submitted by BCD Travel when asked by fashionable London hotel The Hempel to address the theme ‘Chic, Unique, Boutique – Celebrating 13 years of The Hempel’.

The Hempel had hooked on art as a means of attracting ever-elusive agency types to see its new, sleek events space The Gallery. The white-walled, black-floored space, complete with bar, is a veritable, ahem, blank canvas for events – a reception for 150 people, dinner for 80 people or as a meetings space, while it can moonlight between events as a gallery for emerging artists.

Hence The Hempel’s cunning ploy on opening night – get the event agencies to prove just what a creative lot they are by supplying them each with a blank canvas, a brief and some paints in advance and asking them to let their imaginations run free. No gold stars for Preferred Hotel Group and Grassroots HBI, who had empty easels on opening night, but Carlson Wagonlit got hands-on with a colourful hand-print effort. Brook Green gilded a lily, while Banks Sadler was suitably abstract and chic, drawing heavily on The Hempel ‘H’ logo. BCD’s offering avec cartoon turtle was a little more abstract again. Sterling efforts really, but winner of the night was Zibrant’s masterpiece, which not only incorporated The Hempel ‘H’, it managed to get in its own Zibrant ‘Z’. So keen were they to get it right, I heard they bought their own practice canvas first, bless.

Their prize? A dinner for a dozen Zibrant staff at The Hempel – thus gaining another 12 pairs of eyes on site. A master stroke, indeed.

Are restaurants a useful indicator of economic confidence? At one time I would have said they must be, but now I’m not so sure. All the way through this recession it appears, at least, that restaurants in London and Brighton, my stomping grounds, are booming. There were a few early casualties but since then, it is impossible to get a table at the new Jamie’s in Brighton, for instance, and for many others you need to book in advance.

Restaurant guide Harden’s says the expected ‘blood-bath’ didn’t happen, with only 64 London restaurant closures in the past 12 months – fewer than the previous year – and a lot fewer than the 121 new openings. This is an increase on the 111 openings in 2008.

The first year of French superstar chef Alain Ducasse at The Dorchester doesn’t appear to have impressed the guide’s 8,000 restaurant ‘reporters’. It was ranked 24th out of 33 top-price restaurants in Harden’s food quality category, which is not what you want at a place that can charge £24 for a glass of Champagne and where a meal for two with a bottle of wine is likely to cost around £250.

I’m sure I’ve read clever analogies to be made about the timings and consequences of French chefs arriving in London. But I suspect the main attraction for the arrivals at the end of 2007/early 2008 – Ducasse was joined in the capital by Helene Darroze at The Connaught and Jean-Christophe Ansanay-Alex - was the amount of money sloshing around the capital at the time. We know business has been tough for London’s five-star properties since but that needn’t affect the quality of the food in its top restaurants, need it?

The Michelin Guide awarded Alain Ducasse at The Dorchester two stars in January, so it’s not all bad news.

But this is not the only aspect of the recession that is puzzling. And not just me, either, judging by the contradictory news in the media each day.

A headline buried on page 18 of the Financial Times states: 5,000 retailers and wholesalers ‘could go bust next year’. Quoting a report from accountancy firm BDO Stoy Hayward, it says that lower wage growth, declining customer credit and higher unemployment could push 4,360 companies in retail out of business in 2009. It states that this figure could rise to 5,070 next year, which would be double the number that failed in 2007.

The report, which was co-produced by the Centre for Business and Economic Research, says the sector will remain distressed and is unlikely to see failures dropping below 2008 levels until 2012.

So 5,000 retailers and wholesalers go bust; 121 restaurants open in London. Can anyone explain it to me?

Occasionally I am asked to run seminars and workshops on the subject of working with the press with the accent on getting good press coverage. One of the cornerstones of my presentation is: hacks love surveys. So I suppose I shouldn’t be too down on those who practise what I preach.

But while carrying out a survey to get press coverage is one thing, carrying out a survey to support a business case argument needs to be carefully managed, if it isn’t going to look somewhat contrived. Take the examples of British Airways and Regus. In our news section this week, both announce the results of surveys supporting arguments that are supporting planks for their business cases.

British Airways said: “Face-to-face meetings are the key to the success of long term business relationships, according to 95 per cent of people questioned. The survey, carried out among 2,300 business leaders in the US and the UK, also revealed that 89 per cent felt that in person meetings were "essential" for concluding a deal and more important than videoconferencing, webinars and audio-conferencing in most areas of contact.”

No surprises there, then. As prostitute Mandy Rice-Davies nearly said: “They would say that, wouldn’t they?” Meeting is important and to meet, there is a need to travel.

Regus, meanwhile, is promoting its office, meeting and videoconferencing suites around the world. Our news item reads: “Two thirds of business leaders plan to overhaul working practices over the next three years, according to a survey by Regus.

“The research, carried out among 1,130 respondents worldwide, found that 28 per cent plan to increase investment in trust-based working practices, giving employees more choice over when and where they work. 67 per cent believe this will have a positive organisational impact.” The point Regus is trying to make is that folk will need to work on the move in the future because businesses are trying to rid themselves of expensive office space. When they do, Regus will be ready to serve.

But if 28 per cent “plan to increase investment in trust-based working practices”, what about the other 72 per cent? Do they plan to reduce investment in this area?

That’s the trouble with surveys, it’s not the numbers that are the problem. It’s the spaces between the numbers…

Yet another event company has hit the wall. Strata Communication Ltd folded owing £1.6m.
It’s happening so frequently I dare say we’re starting to become a bit immune, but take a look at the creditors’ list and you’re reminded what a tragedy this is both for the industry and the individuals involved.
41 separate companies have been left out of pocket by sums ranging from £800 to £81k. Some of them are big enough to take the hit, but many are small suppliers who will be left hurting.
Combine the already dire economic situation with non-payment and some companies will certainly not survive.
Our annual Financial Benchmarking Survey in the September issue of M&IT looks at agency activity in 2008 and makes for unpleasant reading. And its author, Brett Howell Associates, believes the true effects of the recession will not actually be seen until next year’s accounts. ‘2009 will be bloody’ it says.
So, the lesson? Make sure you’re completely confident about a company’s liquidity before entering into any agreement with them.
Had Belron looked at Strata’s accounts, it may have thought twice about awarding them the contract for their 2008 Best of Belron event. And of course any of the suppliers involved could have run some checks too.
Sadly it’s now left to a host of hotels, caterers, AV suppliers and other sub contractors to pick up the pieces.

House prices down – it’s a disaster!

House prices up – unsustainable, when will the bubble burst?

These two headlines can appear in the same newspaper within days of each other. Which is true? They both are. Which is correct? Who knows?
Which should you buy into? Ah, that’s for you to decide. It’s down to your interpretation of facts. Or perhaps the version of facts you are sold.

Take today’s results for UK hotels in July. According to TRI Hospitality Consulting, London chain hotels occupancy went up this year. Hurrah – great news for hoteliers and, arguably, UK plc. Average occupancy was 88 per cent, an excellent result by anyone’s standards.

But average rates were down by 13 per cent – disastrous news if you are an hotelier, but great news if you are a buyer. To complicate the issue, the biennial Farnborough Air Show - which always drives up demand and rates – took place in July 2008 but not in 2009. So what does that mean? On a like-for-like basis, one would have expected occupancy and average rates to be even lower.

Compared to July 2007 (the last comparable period without Farnborough demand), occupancy levels in 2009 also improved! Only marginally, by 0.1 per cent, but average room rates increased by 2.7 per cent.

“Given the current economic climate,” says the report, “The outperformance of the London hotel market over the comparable period in 2007 demonstrates the capital’s strong market performance.” Hmmm – too many performances in that sentence for my liking, but you get his drift. Now let’s look at the year to date.

“In the seven months to July 2009, average occupancy levels in the capital were down 2.2 percentage points at 78.9 per cent and achieved average room rates dropped by 8.4 per to £109.47, compared to the same period last year.”

But Jonathan Langston, TRI managing director, said: “Year-to-date figures for July 2009 show an encouraging improvement compared to the six months to June and confirm that the recession impact is lessening”.

Let’s hope Mr Langston doesn’t have to eat those words in the aftermath of a double dip.

But in the same report, Langston’s outfit argues that the improvement in July is driven by visitors from the Middle East. These folk understandably prefer to chill in our more temperate climes, while popping into Harrods for the latest in sand-repellent knitwear, than roast at home in summer. After all, UK prices have never looked lower because of the weak pound sterling. Their average stay period is 14 days and severely distorts the overall occupancy of the capital’s hotels in the short term (average stay of non-ME visitors is only five days).

So what happens when our valuable ME visitors return home in September? Will the so-called ‘strong market performance’ be continued? If it does, is that good or bad news for our industry? It depends who you ask.

There is an argument that says we need lower hotel rates in London to make our capital competitive, improve arrival figures, increase retail activity, increase the tax take and grow tourism levels to the UK overall. But I'm sure the hoteliers won't agree with me.

The problem is that London hotel rates are like house prices – absurdly high because of undersupply until a catastrophe brings about a correction. Then everyone presses the panic button. The rates will go back up, and when they do, it will either be a disaster or great news - depending on your point of view...

Speaking at an event soon? Add to your list of slides, notes and nerves of steel the need for colour awareness in your outfit. The BT Convention Centre Liverpool has launched ‘Keynote Colours’, a simple reference tool that shows you what you’re wearing is saying about you.

So do you go for cool blue, or sweet pink? Will grey really see you gathering dust and do sunshine tones really suggest you are yellow-bellied?

According to their reference rules:

•Blue: a colour preferred by Europeans and especially men. Blue is, however, the coldest of colours yet denotes loyalty and authority.

•Grey: one of the most common colours for a man’s suit, it gives an efficient and distinguished image but, over-used, can portray the person as boring.

•Black: the symbol of death, yet also one of the colours most worn to conferences. It provides no character unless teamed with a vivid colour, which can then make the image chic and inspiring.

•Red: this vibrant and eye-catching colour stands out the most, especially in a crowd of hundreds of delegates. Red represents energy and speed but can also be seen as anger and danger, giving off negative connotations.

•Green: to link a product to nature and hope, green is the colour to wear. Delegates remember this colour and associate it with green and environmental issues.

•Pink: offers a symbol of love, softness and sweetness and works well as a colour to combat fear.

•White: white is associated with purity and cleanliness but also portrays a cold and blank image. In Asian countries this colour is associated with mourning.

•Yellow: a stimulating colour but not advised for very nervous people. To an audience it gives off warmth and is also pleasing to the eye, keeping the audience engaged.

As Jacquie Rogers, general manager of the BT Convention Centre Liverpool, points out, huge amounts of thought is put into visual impact at events – so heaven forbid you clash with the stage set.

I would, however, add a couple of further footnotes:
- novelty socks and ties need not apply
- if you think there’s a possibility it might be too short/tight/low cut it probably is
- be wary of stairs and killer high heels. However, only the truly bumble-footed should adopt the TUC’s ludicrous new guidelines for high heel health and safety: “Heels should have a broad base and be no higher than 4cm (1.5in)… if worn for long stretches no higher than 2cm (0.8in).” Adoption of said policy would inevitably also rule out Simon Cowell, Bono, Nicolas Sarkozy or Tom Cruise as guest speakers.

I’m not a morning person at the best of times, but my day got off to a particularly bad start last week while I was staying in the Swiss town of Saint Gallen.

The town is dominated by an imposing Baroque cathedral and to make sure no one forgets it, its loud bell chimes every hour. But in case the six rings at 6am aren’t enough to rouse lazy parishioners, the clock has been set up to chime continually for ten minutes.

Anyone with thoughts of a lie-in can forget it because even the hard of hearing would struggle to sleep through that cacophony.

However, I was relating this story to my other half and he well and truly trumped me.

Whilst staying in a small town in rural Australia he woke to the sound of an air-raid siren.

Panicked, he went down to the guest house’s reception to check if WW3 had broken out.

Thankfully it hadn’t. A member of staff explained to him that the noise was actually to wake the town’s rugby team. Apparently, they’d missed so many games by oversleeping the whole town had voted for the siren! That’s what I call dedication to the game…

Who remembers OHPs? Those giant humming behemoths that, with the power of light, superseded cave drawings, blackboards and whiteboards (in that order) as a means of translating and mass producing an idea from a presenter’s head to an audience? No? Not surprising really, given the dominance of the masterful piece of kit that knocked it off its perch.

The concept of PowerPoint was born 25 years ago – and has had the power to move us, inform us or bore us silly through its use or abuse for the past quarter of a century. The first public laptop PowerPoint presentation took place in 1992. By 1993 it was the market leader in PC presentation programmes. It now has an estimated 95 per cent share of the presentation software market, and it is hard to imagine the meetings industry without it.

According to Microsoft, businesses make an estimated 30 million PowerPoint presentations each day, with the average session running for 250 minutes. That’s an awful lot of PowerPoint. No statistics, unfortunately, have been kept on how many of those presentations were actually successful, memorable or inspiring.
Because, for all the excellent ways that PowerPoint can get your message across, there are myriad ways to commit ‘death by PowerPoint’.

For a start, for many concentration-deficient Gen Y-ers, an average 250-minute presentation is already 230 minutes too long. Then you have those who cram too many words on the screen, or use tiny weeny print that renders the whole concept useless. Alternatively there are those who condense the entire history of their company down to a few over-simplified bullet points and expect to get the full message across.

Even if you get the slides right, there are those who end up 'talking to the slides' quite literally, offering the audience a fabulous view of their posterior and rarely their face.

Most cringeworthy, however, are those who have still not figured out how to move on to the next slide (cue much embarrassed shuffling and coughing by the audience). Ultimately, of course, the PowerPoint is in the presenter’s hands. Alas, those using it do not have to pass a test before unleashing their skills on a hapless audience.

Some speakers, of course, hate it like the plague and avoid using it, but there’s an argument for the benefits of using pictorial or graphical means to get complex ideas across. And for all the tweeting, Bluetooth, audience response technology, large screen projections and techie gadgetry now available, PowerPoint is still holding its own. Let’s see what happens in another 25 years.

It probably doesn’t come as much of a surprise to those of us outside the world of high finance to discover that the Canadian banks are emerging from the banking crisis better than most others. And it may be less surprising still to discover that this is largely down to a conservative culture of teamwork and mutual respect.

So far, so stereotyped. Canada’s regulators can take some of the credit, if you’ll excuse the pun, and subprime mortgages have only played a small part in the housing market. Canadian banks are also required to take out insurance on mortgages representing more than 80 per cent of a home’s value.

But according to Gordon Nixon, chief executive of Canada’s largest bank, the Royal Bank of Canada, there was a shift in attitude in the 1990s and early this decade which meant the bank looked very closely at its balance sheet and ensured that each client decision was sensible. “We weren’t going to lend our balance sheet to a customer in Europe who Royal Bank had no relationship with simply because there was an opportunity to lend money and to earn a return,” he said. (Bet some others wish they’d thought of that…)

And while RBC has taken billions of dollars of write-downs in the past two years on holdings of toxic securities and other asset impairments, it posted net income of C$5.7bn (£3.1bn) in the past 18 months. And with excess capital of an estimated C$7-8bn, it is able to cherry-pick from the casualties south of the border including staff – it’s hired 100 senior bankers and 300 consultants so far this year.

I think we can be pretty confident, then, that this is not a company that spends its money casually. And when it decides to operate an incentive, for instance, it has thought long and hard about ROI, motivation, bonding and networking.

So it is also not surprising to learn that RBC takes 700 of its tellers, admin staff, junior employees and middle managers on a Caribbean cruise each January as a reward for superior performance. It is also no surprise that a CEO who believes in teamwork and mutual respect would join them.

Nixon has been in charge of RBC’s 73,000 employees for eight years. “We don’t tolerate fiefdoms,” he says. “Those are the sorts of things that brought down other organisations.

“I’m a great believer in ensuring that you’ve got the right person running your businesses and giving them the rope to make mistakes but also to do the right thing.”

And as we all know, that means keeping everyone motivated. It might not be surprising but it’s good to keep reminding the world that it works.

Blimey – the FTSE is up 34 per cent since March; Japan out of recession to join those prosperous French and Germans; record incoming tourism figures recorded for the UK; demand for property in London's West End rising and recruitment company Michael Page says the UK jobs market is stabilising.

Get the plastic out, lads, it’s time to get silly again!

Trouble is, the bad news mountain is so high and so toxic that this mere pimple of good news leaves me more than slightly incredulous. The cynic in me starts burrowing beneath the headlines looking for ‘news naivety’. Here’s one example from today’s Guardian:
‘A record influx of overseas and domestic tourists has boosted demand for property in London's West End, landlord Shaftesbury reported. The firm, which owns more than 450 properties in London's Theatreland, Chinatown and Carnaby Street, said it was seeing "healthy" demand for retail, restaurant and residential property. "We are continuing to meet or exceed our letting targets for these uses," it said.

‘However, demand for offices continues to fall and rents remain under pressure. Shaftesbury said that when offices become vacant it tries to find alternative uses for the property.’

The last paragraph is the real news. Having lost our manufacturing industry base we are now migrating from being service industry specialists to being a nation of shopkeepers and restaurateurs! Remember the joke about the definition of hell being where the chefs are British? I wonder what the tourists make of this. And what will happen to all these shops and restaurants when the tourists go home in September? What will be generating the corporate travel if all the offices are converted to other uses? Turning offices into restaurants? How much can we all eat?

But there’s nothing naive about the reading of the results on the continent. Why are we surprised that the French and Germans have emerged more quickly than us from recession? After all, they didn’t have economies dependent on over-inflated property prices and plastic. UK plc was hideously overdrawn and we still are. In fact, our balance sheet looks worse than ever. If we were a business, a creditor would call in the receiver. If we were a horse, somebody would shoot us!

But the good news is that property prices are rising again, driven by overseas purchasers and this will fuel our recovery.

Haven’t I heard this somewhere before?

It’s hard to imagine many Brits even noticing if a local festivity was quietly shelved by a budget-cutting local council. A few disappointed school children who’d been working on their costumes, a couple of grumbles from the local ice-cream trade and a fed-up tourism official or two who’d been working hard behind the scenes.

But they do things differently in Spain. Which is why, along with the climate, we love to visit and retire there (or used to before it got too expensive). A town hall south of Madrid has been pelted with eggs and tomatoes because it has put in place budget restrictions which are forcing fiesta organisers to stage cut-price bullfights or scrap them altogether.

It is reported that there has been a 20 per cent fall in bullfighting-related events this year with only 401 such events authorised by the Madrid regional government in 57 municipalities.

Pinto and Rivas-Vaciamadrid, two towns south of the capital, have cancelled their bullfights, which are usually the highlight of the summer celebrations. It is, apparently, the first time in living memory there hasn’t been a bullfight. The president of a local club for fans of bullfighting, Jose Antonio Perez, says the town hall was attacked by youths angry at the cancellation of a local 20-year-old matador. He said: “What youngsters most enjoy is running the bulls through the streets before the bullfight.”

The budget for the fiestas has been slashed from €500,000 (£430,000) to €142,000 (£122,000) to save money. The town is strapped for cash and also owes pay to 800 municipal workers. And these events don’t come cheap, either, a fight organised in one of the country’s towns or villages can cost from €18,000 (£15,500) up to €100,000 (£86,000).

There will probably not be much sympathy for the angry pro-bullfighting protestors here in Blighty. Indeed, even in Spain animal rights groups are delighted. All of which is a shame, really, otherwise I’m sure one of our enterprising event organisers could see their way to making it profitable… ticket sales, incentive tie-ins, a supporting exhibition, sponsorship opportunities, merchandising… and working with a budget of about a third of what’s required.

That’s what you do already, isn’t it?

Hoteliers keen to maximise their downtime and boost occupancy appear to have stumbled upon the ‘Sunday session’ as a potential winner.

Within a few minutes I received two such offers in my inbox. As one of a number of special deals, the Hotel du Vin group is offering an overnight stay for the pocket-friendly sum of £10, providing you spend £75 in the Bistro on food and wine first (well worth it based upon the excellent meal I sampled on their Brighton premises). All, of course, providing it’s a Sunday night (hmm, isn’t there an August Bank Holiday coming up?)

Meanwhile, von Essen hotels' 'Savour Sundays' incentives apply to agents only (though the rate is based on two people sharing a room if your nearest and dearest was keen). The price? £50 per room (plus compulsory show round the next morning). And only on a Sunday, of course.

There’s nothing quite so naughty and nice as a Sunday night out to kickstart the week. Employers should perhaps be on the lookout for an increase in three-day weekend 'swine flu'.

Whether Sunday offers will translate into more out-of-town meetings kicking off bright and early on a Monday morning is dubious. Certainly a pleasant start to the working week in a nice hotel could put agents in a more positive frame of mind for booking. What this does show, however, is the increasing willingness of hotels to be flexible particularly on less popular days to maximise business through the door. Those event organisers willing to forego the standard Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday time slots may find themselves armed with additional bargaining power.

Am I the only one who thinks Twitter is for... er… other people? Should I own up to it? Is it like admitting to liking The Carpenters? Will my street cred be finished?

Well, I’m coming out. I admit it: I titter when people mention Twitter.

Why? It’s a long story, but stay with me. In the beginning, people started to produce pamphlets. These were just political ideas scribbled in varying use of English with varied spelling. These were distributed by those who wanted to get their ideas and beliefs heard. These were the forerunners of all our media. This was the start of publishing. With Caxton’s invention of the printing press there was an explosion of media. It gave us a more open society and unfettered media has been the bedrock of our democracy.

In technology terms, until the 1970s, nothing much changed in print media. Colour was added, presses got better but they still used ‘hot metal’ and we had armies of people working in them – typesetters, compositors, copy-holders and others too numerous to mention. Most of them couldn’t spell their own names in block capitals but they were all paid more than lowly hacks like me.

Then came ‘new’ (a relative term) technology. It was brought to the old Fleet Street and the new Wapping by Rupert Murdoch but he cleverly let another poor sucker be the cannon fodder in this battle. Eddie Shah and his Today newspaper fought pitched battles with the unions in the North-west of England and it led to the demise of Today. Murdoch’s war was the easier for it and all the typesetters and compositors were consigned to the scrap-heap. It left journalists to produce publications on screen and the process from there to print became a fast track.

What’s all this got to do with Twitter, I hear you ask? Well, here’s the point: during all that time, from Hazlitt to Peregrine Worsthorne, nobody cared much about the medium. Content was king, and it still is. Other media vehicles like TV and radio came and established their roles in the information delivery business. To ensure its quality improved, the trade of journalism refined itself gradually. Since we couldn’t trust writers – no matter how good they were – we had to employ sub-editors to edit their copy. And because we didn’t trust sub-editors or compositors, we employed readers. And because we didn’t want anything to be printed wrongly we had people called stone subs and others signing off pages after cuts and edits had been made in newspapers and their counterparts in broadcast media. Every word was carefully chosen and edited by experts for delivery to an ever more discerning and sophisticated consumer.

Today it has been transferred to the internet with the same attention to detail – talented journalists producing great material, checked, improved, edited and delivered immediately to our computers. What a wonderful thing this is!

So now, just as Murdoch is announcing that he will charge for access to his high quality, well-researched, carefully-written, content-rich material, Twitter is being wittered about in high places as something of value. So all this time, have the content deliverers been wrong in their efforts to deliver top quality? Should they instead have been focused on speed, quantity and unfettered ill-considered drivel produced by the great unwashed - like Twitter, for example?

Murdoch might not be the kind of person you would want sharing your daughter’s bed, but you have to agree that he is no fool. He is the superbaron of all media barons. From newsprint to Sky TV, he bosses news delivery because he understands the consumer demand. When people said they would never pay for subscription TV when they already get TV ‘free’, he ignored them, and now we pay.

So when people tell me the world will never pay for internet access, and that Twitter is the thing, I barely restrain my titter.

Do I listen to Murdoch or tweeters? I think it’s a ‘no brainer’. And after a week when Friends Reunited was sold by ITV for 15 per cent of the purchase price, you have to wonder if this week’s on-line sensation is next month’s microchip paper.

They don’t call Thailand the ‘land of smiles’ for nothing. The people there are truly the gentlest and most welcoming I have ever met.
The country itself offers not only incredible beauty, but also a very high standard of product for the conference and event organiser.
This is why it is particularly tragic that the destination is suffering so much at the moment.
European MICE business is almost non-existent since the recession set in, and received a further set back following political unrest earlier in the year, which saw airport closures and event cancellations.
On a recent fam trip I asked a number of hotel managers about which UK companies they had hosted or would host this year and all gave the same answer – none.
One utterly idyllic resort we visited on the island of Krabi reported to be running at between 12 and 17 per cent occupancy – 12 per cent was break-even.
Clearly, there are some fantastic deals to be had. The manager of the Dusit Thani Laguna Phuket, which recently hosted Hillary Clinton for the ASEAN Summit, told me she has never sold her resort so cheaply. A 24-hour meeting package here starts from just £53!
This country really needs our support, particularly the seaside destinations. Take your business here and not only will you get fantastic value for money, but you are guaranteed that they will pull out all the stops. And service like that is bound to raise a smile!

I find myself torn by Ryanair. On the one hand I want the £9.99 flight, on the other, everything about the service makes me want to cry.
I turned up at Gatwick to check in for my flight to Dublin, only to discover that if you want the luxury of checking in at the airport you have to pay an extra £10! This is on top of £10 each way for your luggage and £5 each way payment handling fee. Then when you board the plane you’re faced with sullen staff flogging you £6 soggy sandwiches and you quickly end up wishing you’d paid the extra £50 to go with British Airways.
Certainly BBC Question Time’s David Dimbleby must have been cursing himself for taking the cheap option when he found himself among hundreds of travellers who missed their flights from Stansted last weekend after Ryanair failed to open enough check-in desks.
The low-cost carrier opened only 11 check-in desks for 255 flights forcing about 500 passengers to book alternative flights or miss their holidays. Some resorted to sleeping in the terminal – it might not be the seaside, but at least it’s a change of scenery!
The airline has said it plans to scrap check-in altogether from October offering only bag drop facilities at the airport. It then hopes to ban checked-in luggage all together so it can do away with baggage handlers. The next cost-cutting measure involves passengers taking it in turns to fly the aircraft - OK, I made that bit up, but it may not be far off.
While Ryanair may be cheap, it’s certainly not cheerful and it will be interesting to see how far passengers can be pushed before they dip into their pockets to upgrade to a better service.

If you missed this week’s Channel 5 TV episode of The Hotel Inspector, you missed a treat. It was a glorious revelation of astonishing incompetence in Britain’s hotel industry and it must have had the toes of VisitBritain’s staff curling in unison. These are the people charged with the duty of telling the world how great our tourism infrastructure is (but they will surely fail while hotels like this exist).

Alex Polizzi is the inspector – she is the no-nonsense, shoot-from-the-lip and take-no-prisoners niece of Rocco Forte. Her ‘clients’ for this show were perfect media fodder: a Berk and a Pudding. Ex-antiques dealer Jonathan Davies and former nurse Jacquie Noot (yes, that’s not a typo), purchased the 300-year-old Rose and Crown in Wisbech four years ago. Davies has the personality of a wardrobe while Noot has the presence of, er, as I said, a pudding. Between them they had the hospitality and business skills of Basil Fawlty’s dog but here they were, apparently trying to be hoteliers.

The place was a dump and The Berk was a collectaholic. The car park looked like it had been the scene of a small war. He filled up room after room with his bric-a-brac and Polizzi was driven to distraction with the clutter filling every function room, a number of bedrooms and even the office.

It needed root-and-branch surgery but Polizzi only had time to deal with the ground floor and the car park, with the help of The Pudding’s nephew. It was very achievable and, indeed, it was dramatically improved in time for a client reception for customers to see the new-look Rose & Crown. But The Berk failed to appear until too late and customers left without Mine Host pressing their flesh or even speaking to them. Polizzi was furious with him and rightly so. It was clear that The Berk wouldn’t listen and would never learn. He made Mr Fawlty look like Conrad Hilton.

The piece de resistance came when, after the latest brainless suggestion from The Berk, Ms Polizzi was incandescent with rage. She said: “Jonathan, you are polishing a turd!”
At that point I fell off the sofa so I missed his response.

HM Government is to flog the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in London. QEIICC chief executive Ernest Vincent confirmed the property is up for sale “as part of the government's wish to realise cash from its assets". Erm, I think you’ll find it’s our asset, actually. But, anyhow, a timetable has been set for a sale in 2012.

In 2008/09 the centre paid a dividend of £4.5m to the Exchequer (for exchequer, read taxpayer). Turnover for the financial year was more than £11.5m – an increase of 7.3 per cent. The QEIICC hosted 384 meetings and events during the year, with room hire increasing by 8.7 per cent. At the same time £1.2m was spent on improvements to the building and its equipment, including the first phase of a digital signage system.

So, things at the centre are going swimmingly, the taxpayer is getting a nice return on our investment, users are getting a good venue at a good price and everyone is happy. So why are we selling it at the bottom of the market? Why are we dumping a piece of prime real estate and a profitable venue when prices will still be on the floor? Why aren’t we waiting until the market rises again to a peak to ensure the best possible ROI for the QEII? Am I the only cynic who scents the whiff of a rodent? A two-legged rodent in a pinstriped suit, perhaps, but a rodent nonetheless.

Murray Quinney, head of estates at the Department of Communities and Local Government, said: "The QEII Conference Centre is an internationally recognised facility in a unique, high value location. By setting a realistic disposal timetable of 2012, the government is looking to secure a sale in more favourable economic conditions.”

Is he serious? In 2012?

Property consultants appointed for the sale are quoted as saying: “"Whilst the existing conference centre business appears robust, we think further value could be generated from the asset if transferred into private ownership. We also believe that there will be significant interest from those with an eye to a medium or longer term redevelopment play, looking to capitalise on the site's unique location at the heart of Westminster.”

Is this the end of the QEII Centre or the beginning of a redeveloped international convention centre (that London needs) in the hands of foreign ownership? Either way, this doesn’t look promising. Watch this space.

In three years time the Olympics will be up and running in London. I know this because at least three different news anchors were doing live feeds yesterday from a vantage point that took in the steel shell of the new Olympic stadium – and a rather ugly car park – and noting the countdown had begun. But, as both solemnly intoned, would London be ready on time? Well, yes. It has to be. Come rain or recession the Olympics is just not something you can drop the ball on. Imagine the repercussions for London’s reputation as an events destination (Rugby World Cup bid 2015, FIFA World Cup bid 2018 etc etc) should the infrastructure not be in place.

The Guardian recently flagged up a £100m funding black hole in the capital budget of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport – which leads the government’s delivery of the Olympics. The article stated the ‘spending over-commitment’ could potentially derail projects such as the British Museum’s new exhibition wing, the Tate Modern’s redevelopment, the British Film Institute’s film centre on London’s South Bank and the Stonehenge visitor centre. With private funding increasingly hard to come by, these arts projects may be mothballed – a real shame if it means they won’t be ready for the influx of international visitors due thanks to the Olympic legacy. But there’s no way the brakes can be put on the Olympic's infrastructure itself – the world is watching.

Developments for the 2012 Games are, according to all reports, running on time and to the allocated Olympics budget presently. Even the trial of the Javelin train, taking less than seven minutes to cover the three-mile journey from central London to the Olympic Park, went smoothly, bringing hope to those who fear London’s transport system may be the thing to derail the Games.

I must admit to feeling a frisson of excitement watching the TV – there’s just something special about the Olympics and Paralympics. Three years is still a long time and no doubt future hurdles will arise. London looks well placed for now – may it reach the finish line in fine form.

Every cloud, they say, etc. Take GSK, for example – while the rest of us are wearing face masks and living in fear, the drug company is rubbing its hands with glee at the prospect of trousering a swift £2 billion with its new vaccine. Life can be such a swine!

So what are recessions good for?

Recruitment costs – they come down. The number of ‘sickies’ – oops, I mean employee absenteeism – has reduced (at least, before Swine Flu arrived). Prices have come down, there are lots of added-value deals to be had and, of course, interest rates have come down. And Microsoft profits are down 29 per cent – even better news!

So, bizarrely, if you’ve got cash and a job and a mortgage, this recession isn’t a bad place to be! This is reflected by the latest retail sales figures. Having paid off his credit card bills, Joe Consumer is spending again (but not with Microsoft, apparently.)

But if you are running a business, you are in a different place. Your employees – with the exception of the sales team - might be having a whale of a time but if you are running an event agency, a venue or a business anywhere in our supply chain, you probably feel like you’d like to be eaten by a whale! For you, everything is going down, except the bad debt level.

At times like this, we all need all the help we can get and yesterday’s frog is looking decidedly attractive in the absence of all those vanished princes. So the debate on our Mailbag section regarding venues paying commissions (or not) to agencies is particularly curious. I won’t discuss the specific case under discussion, as it is sub-judice, and I don’t know the facts. But what’s clear from the number of posts is that this subject is particularly raw with the agencies. The reason for this is partly because some venues have treated agencies with distain, even in the good times. Specifically they have always paid them very slowly and often very late. For a three-men-and-a-dog agency, cash flow is imperative and time spent on chasing debts must be galling when time is precious and the venue company is big enough and rich enough to pay its bills on time.

So now when times are tough, you might expect both sides to be working harder than ever to get along rather than paying men-in-wigs to sort out their business problems. Venues shouldn’t bite the hands that feed them, they should stroke and occasionally kiss them – just as one should kiss all the frogs – and avoid disputes with customers at all costs.

My old Mum knew nothing about business but she knew good sense. She used to tell me: “Only two sorts of people go to court – and they are lawyers and fools.”

‘Nuff said.

Amusing news that Britons are eschewing the use of both a knife and a fork, with forks outselling knives two to one as the one-handed ‘eating a takeaway in front of the telly’ culture takes over. Maybe, I wonder, these are the same people who have mastered the fine art of bowl food consumption.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love the concept of bowl food at events. Easy, breezy and cost effective - no buffet wastage or tables and chairs to be laid out. Yet I found myself at a recent event trying to juggle a wine glass, a bowl of potentially messy goulash (with extra bread bits on top preventing easy access) and a napkin in one hand, a fork in the other, while clamping my handbag under one elbow and trying to network. Needless to say I was expected to produce business cards, and found myself at least two hands short of being capable of such an extreme manoeuvre without putting everyone around me in danger of wearing my goulash. (I hasten to add that there were no tables about to put things on, the ground was wet and my new acquaintances were similarly burdened.) Don’t even get me started on bowl food that comes with chopsticks.

Worse, bowl food seems to have brought out a new kind of catering pest. We all know the rules and game plans of established catering – nothing too messy, dribbly or crumbly when eating canapés mid-chat. And everyone has their own buffet attack methodology - there are the ‘sit-as-close-as-possible-get-in-first-to-get-the-good-stuff crew’, the queue-jumpers (much despised in British circles) and the hangers on, who wait until nearly everyone else has gone through so they can feel free to load their plate as full as they like, not bound by the social niceties of appearing polite ‘so as to leave something for the others’.

But bowl food? There usually comes a time at a catered event when, a couple of glasses of bubbly in, delegates start to seek out food to take the edge off the booze and prevent future slurring. And this is where bowl food can lead to a strange sort of desperation. You can see them, the delegates that tail the catering staff, speed-walking in their wake, itching for the opportunity to lift a bowl from the tray. Then there are the lurkers, those who realise the catering staff are coming from one exit point and hang around hoping to nab them on their way out, causing a veritable scrum near the kitchen door. What is it with bowl food? When there’s a buffet laid out, you can see the food there in all its glory so you know it's there. Bowl food, by its comparitively rare and fleeting appearance, plays to human survival conditioning – if you don’t take one now, who knows if there will be any more?

Bowl food works well when there's plenty of it, and when you have somewhere to place your bits and pieces (or if you are lucky enough to walk around unfettered at events). But caterers beware - eating on the hoof without looking like a farm animal is quite a skill. And please, no chopsticks.

From drunken ‘tweeting’ at weddings to holiday snaps on Facebook, it is easy to fall foul of the immediacy of the electronic age. And with employers regularly trawling social networking sites before hiring, it pays everyone to think twice before posting anything at all.

And it doesn’t end there. The students of today might live to regret posting material that seems reasonable now but could look quite different to a future employer in 20 years time.

And this is true for brands, marketers and the events industry too. Such has been the success of Twitter, the messaging site that allows members to post 140-character updates for everyone to see, that few firms can afford to ignore it. Astonishingly Twitter has more than 32m monthly unique users, according to comScore, an agency that measures web traffic. And yet only last year no one had heard of it.

Earlier this year KFC and its advertising agency launched its grilled chicken – a departure for the fried chicken specialist – on the Oprah Winfrey Show. The launch included details of a voucher for a free meal available on Winfrey’s website. When the link to the voucher reached Twitter, it was forwarded to millions of users: the voucher’s webpage crashed and restaurants were overwhelmed.

Still, it led to masses of free publicity and although some of it was critical, in the world of viral marketing it is the buzz that counts. And for KFC that meant being the top trending topic – as they’re known – on Twitter. (Trending topics are popular phrases that appear on a user’s Twitter homepage. By clicking on a trend, the user is taken to a list of the latest ‘tweets’ featuring that word or phrase.)

This may have been quite an achievement for KFC but trying to increase publicity by including top trending topics is a trick that needs careful handling, as Habitat has discovered. The high street furniture store posted some tweets, which it has since removed and apologised for, containing the name of the opposition candidate in Iran’s recent elections, Mousavi. One read: “#MOUSAVI Join the database for free to win a £1,000 gift card.” Mousavi’s supporters in Iran have of course used Twitter widely both to organise and get coverage of their demonstrations and political protests.

Habitat claims the messages were posted by an unnamed intern. And this seems perfectly credible to me. There must be many companies that have handed the ‘tweeting’ job to a junior member of staff. Well, they're youngsters, they know all about these new-fangled electronic sites, don’t they?

It might pay to just check who’s in charge of yours before it leads to red faces all round.

The assault by Regus on the corporate meetings market took another turn last week with the announcement of the results of a survey carried out by BDRC. Until now, Regus marketing has been all about price – it announced a £6 per delegate per hour rate that has forced hotels and other venues to review their fixed 8-hour and 24-hour rates and some have responded with hourly rates of their own.

But Regus’s latest approach is to attack the terms and conditions of venues that impose many and disparate penalties for cancellations. BDRC’s research says the average charge for cancellations up to 15 days in advance was 82 per cent of the hire fee. Average cost of cancellation up to 30 days in advance is 59 per cent and up to 60 days in advance is 43 per cent. The average cost of cancellation for each delegate is £26.40.

The result, it claims, is that hotel meeting room cancellation charges are costing UK plc £119m a year. Another way of looking at this is that UK hotels trouser £119m a year for providing no services whatsoever! Nice work, if you can get it.

That doesn’t touch other non-hotel venues but even if BDRC’s figures are on the high side (although they claim they are conservative), this is a serious wad of cash for doing nothing except owning an empty room. Now Regus would say this, wouldn’t it? Its approach is to sell its ‘more flexible’ price model to today’s cash-strapped corporate clientele because its cancellation fees only kick in 10 days before the event. The survey results are a knee in the groin for hotel operators already struggling for survival despite this £100 million-plus of unearned income. Hotels would reasonably argue that in this climate, the chances of off-loading a cancelled meeting room in a 30-day window are between slim and impossible so they need to keep the cash to pay for the endless time they spend shilly-shallying with clients who constantly change their minds.

I have some sympathy for this argument, but it’s a question of degree, isn’t it? The bottom line in this argument is that a service provider is demanding payment for a service that is not being delivered. This is difficult to justify when demand exceeds supply but when demand has fallen off a cliff, this is an impossible argument to win.

Organisers would do well to look hard at the next contract that arrives – suddenly venues might be much more flexible about cancellation penalities.

Is the commission model a dinosaur?
The news Logical Venue Solutions is taking Britannia Hotel Wigan to court for an alleged unpaid commission invoice goes right to the heart of one of this industry’s thorny issues.

Without wanting to wade into that particular case, which will no doubt be settled in court, the basic premise behind it is if you do a job, you expect to get paid for it. But can the commission question muddy the water?

The rumbles were audible at the recent ‘win win with hotels and venues’ session at the Summer Eventia. Return on investment guru Elling Hamso went so far as to call commissions a “disease” and a “dinosaur business model”, saying “they’re an embarrassment to the industry altogether”.

Can we cut commission out altogether? Would all agencies be able to confidently hand clients an itemised bill with a net rate and a service fee for their involvement?

Of course agencies have to be paid for the service they provide, liaising between a client and a venue or supplier. How much is this value worth in terms of time and labour costs? In terms of product knowledge and the ability to track down the perfect fit between client and venue? In terms of any long-standing agent/supplier relationships which open up opportunities for increased flexibility and added value? And the sticky bit – even if you manage to put a price on it – can you get a client to pay it if it’s there in black and white on the invoice? It’s a buyer’s market after all. Would the client go to another agency that does not charge for the service? Surely any savvy client will know, even if an agent is touting a 'free service' offering, that somewhere along the way that work must be paid for.

The mutterings came to some sort of consensus. Ultimately, if the commission model is cut, everyone would need to hold hands and make the jump together.

Commission raises issues of integrity and transparency in the industry. And, as always, it raises issues of recognition of the role of events professionals – for that’s what we are of course, professionals. Any other (albeit accredited) professional can charge a service fee – why can’t we?

Since yesterday's posting there's been murmurs that the blog focused purely on the negative and M&IT has dug itself a hole with this take on the bucket and spade scenario at Summer Eventia.

So, to put the shoe on the other foot:
Delegate ratings of the conference reveal that 87 per cent felt it was ‘good’ or ‘very good’ with delegates noting good content, good people and good organisation.

Sugar junkies (and this industry harbours many) were no doubt in their element at coffee breaks. Conference food is always a divisive issue – one person sees Brighton Rock as candy stick, one sees it as PR schtick. And as for fish and chips on the pier? For many, it was deemed an on-the-money local touch in these credit crunch times.

Does a stark playground at an under-privileged school deserve the attention of the community and its support in making it better? That was never in doubt, and a good job was done too, with the post-event feel good factor high. Was it perhaps as eagerly anticipated as it might have been if the weather had been playing ball and provided delegates with blazing sunshine? Probably not. But can a conference organiser ever predict the vagaries of the UK weather? Definitely not.

Brightonians might not go on the pier, but visitors to Brighton sure do and the majority of delegates were exactly that. Might a former Brightonian have a personal opinion that perhaps the city could have been showcased a little better? Of course.

We discussed a lot of important issues as an industry. We learnt a lot of interesting things, with almost universal praise of Roger Martin-Fagg’s presentation. The drinks and the networking flowed. Despite inclement weather and the news the recession is not budging anytime soon most people retained a sunny outlook. We found out a number of association members can sing surprisingly well (and some really can’t sing at all). We discovered the energising powers of team-building after what, for many, was a long night. Did everyone enjoy all of it, all the time? It’s a matter of opinion.

Brighton rocks. I know; I used to live there. It’s a diverse city bubbling over with funky restaurants, shops, bars, hotels and cultural offerings. So it’s a real shame that the 216 event professionals invited to Brighton for the Summer Eventia conference were shown the outdated bucket and spade side of the destination.
Delegates were taken for soggy fish and chips and doughnuts on the pier, karaoke and a bbq, while conference sessions took place at the Holiday Inn Brighton Seafront. Not that there’s anything wrong with the Holiday Inn, but its offering is reliably cookie cutter, and the opportunity to utilise truly unique venues like the Pavilion or the Dome was missed.

Brighton should be a treat for foodies, boasting a treasure trove of award-winning eateries offering international cuisine. The food served up throughout Summer Eventia not only missed a trick by sticking to seaside stereotypes but also totted up the calories. During coffee breaks, where refreshments included industrial-sized cookies, ice-cream with clotted cream on the top, chocolate éclairs, candyfloss, sweeties and rock, the fruit was largely there as a means of attacking the chocolate fountain. At a time when the word on every event organisers’ lips is ‘healthy eating’ it seemed rather embarrassing this was the best their own association could manage.

Although it had its heart in the right place, the CSR activity included as part of the event was also misguided. Delegates, who had dressed for a summer which failed to turn up, were taken to a dismal urban school playground and asked to whitewash a wall in the cold. It might have been for a good cause but, trust me, no one was looking forward to it.

I must state that Izania Downie did do a fine job for Eventia by pulling the conference together at the last minute, with minimal funds, and it’s fair to say everyone enjoyed themselves overall despite the dismal weather.

But there’s no doubt that Brighton was done a disservice in front of this important audience. Adam Bates from VisitBrighton announced that a guide scheme would be launched in September assigning event organisers with local people ‘passionate about the destination’. This seems to me an excellent idea because, as my colleague reminded me post-event, ‘Brightonians never go on the pier, darling!’

The news that leading performance improvement agency Maritz in the USA has narrowly escaped being owed more than US$25m by bankrupt General Motors will send a shiver down the spine of agency managers worldwide.

GM's creditors are expected to receive only 10 cents in the dollar – a scary thought for other agencies who have been persuaded to finance some supplier payments on behalf of their much bigger and financially stronger clients. If the newly restructured GM had not assumed the Maritz contract, would the car company's unpaid debt have been enough to see off Maritz? Who knows? In the US, private companies (and Maritz is still a family-owned outfit), do not have to file accounts in the public domain as we do in the UK. Why did it let GM get away with a debt of this magnitude? A couple of years back, when its UK subsidiary was haemorrhaging cash by the million, Maritz told me they could handle it. “We are a cash-rich company with substantial reserves,” they told us. They had better be.

But the bigger picture is more important. How many agencies out there are waiting for payments from clients, too scared to ruin relationships to issue a final demand? And how many will extend credit GM-style in future? And how many clients are using small agencies to ease their cash flow problems?

Maritz is continuing to work with the ‘new’ GM - but, I suspect, may well reconsider their position on extending credit...

As the president of China cuts short his attendance at the G8 summit in Italy to attend to the crisis at home, the streets of Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang region, fill with army and security forces.

The roots of the unrest are, of course, complex but they also include the usual suspects: the frustrations of poverty and discrimination.

In M&IT’s Trends & Spends survey published in the July/August issue, China ranks third most popular destination by number of groups travelling long haul out of the UK. As this extraordinary country struggles to deal with its extraordinary development, there will be plenty of opportunities for the world’s tourist industry to become involved. International support for human rights will be crucial.

And if income disparities are part of the problem now, that only looks set to grow. China now has more rich people than Britain for the first time. According to the latest World Wealth Report produced by Merrill Lynch and Capgemini, there are an estimated 364,000 dollar millionaires in China compared to 362,000 in Britain. These are also known as high net worth individuals (HNWI) - defined as being worth $1m excluding their home. In Britain the dramatic events in financial services and the plunge in property values has meant a fall of 131,000 of these here while China is the world’s fastest-growing major economy.

The numbers of the world’s super-rich have also been decimated. And although it’s hard to feel terribly sorry for those ultra high net worth individuals – defined as those with at least $30m (£18m) to invest – it is a striking illustration of what has been going on. According to this report, the collective net worth of the super-rich has slumped by 24 per cent and their numbers have dropped by 25 per cent to 78,000. HNWIs have suffered a 19.5 per cent decline in their wealth and there are 15 per cent fewer of them.

These figures take us back to levels last seen in 2005.

Despite all of this, predictions are that overall wealth will reach $48,000bn by 2013 as the world’s economies recover. And for HNWIs, that’s a predicted annual growth rate of around 8.1 per cent. So, despite recent drops, it looks as though the rich will continue to get richer and the poor, well, we’ll have to wait and see. But in China anyway, it could be a more encouraging story.

At the last SITE international conference I incurred the wrath of several heads of events industry associations by accusing them of being “lousy at PR”. I told them they had failed in their first responsibility – to promote the image of their industry. But I didn’t just tell them in private - I told them on stage, in front of all the delegates, in plenary session, and you could say they weren’t best pleased. In fact, several of them were livid.

Within a few weeks the AIG story broke in the US, followed by the government handout stories and suddenly the events industry was under pressure. Stories appeared in the nationals and on TV and radio criticising the events industry. The industry had no PR machinery to counter it and the rest is history.

Then it was exported to this side of the pond and suddenly the reputation of our industry was in tatters. The lexicon changed: 'meeting' became ‘junket’, ‘incentive’ became ‘freebie’ and the events industry became paranoid. And here we are, in the middle of a recession where price is already a hurdle but perception means many events are simply out of the question. Corporate employees are advised not to wear their delegate badges in public for fear of being fingered as a ‘junketeer.’

This week, an expert in the field of brand values told meetings industry leaders the meetings industry had “an image of shame and embarrassment” in the current economic climate (see news section).

Branding guru Simon Anholt told convention centre managers they must fundamentally change their branding by telling clients what they do, not what they are, at their annual conference in A Coruna, Spain. He said the brand of the industry was “a product associated with shame and embarrassment in the minds of your audience.”

But he added: "However this economic crisis is also a tremendously exciting moment, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity while the pieces are still in the air, for you to do something. When the pieces land again, the landscape will be different."

On September 21 National Meetings Week begins. This was an initiative originally launched by M&IT magazine to promote our industry to the nation. We handed over management of it to VisitBritain. This is the week when many of the pieces could, and should, be reassembled. The entities that should do it are the meetings and event industry associations whose members are desperate for someone to unblock the pipeline and let the meetings flow by making the events industry acceptable and even desirable again.

They should cancel all their networking events and other navel-gazing exercises and get out there with a PR campaign that celebrates the positive contribution our industry makes to education, commerce and communication.

They have until September 21 to do their jobs when National Meetings Week will make the task relatively easy. Let’s see who steps up to the plate.

In the last few months we’ve written countless stories about the rise and rise of virtual conferencing, and how all event organisers/meetings venues/industry suppliers are about to be replaced by robots.

There’s no doubting the technology is better than ever before, but can meeting virtually ever come close to meeting in the flesh and is it really as cost effective as the propaganda would have us believe?

I had my first taste of a virtual press conference at last year’s ICCA in Canada. Employees from various different offices of global event agency Congrex were video linked to our meeting room. Granted, it gave us press an opportunity to talk to individuals who otherwise could not have been present, but I did not feel terribly comfortable raising questions by addressing a television screen and being filmed.

In addition, poor sound quality made it difficult to understand the responses. The whole experience was far from smooth and, in my opinion, less satisfactory than a simple telephone conversation.

It was a similar story at Grass Roots’ Meeting Management Forum last week, which, in a session entitled ‘Meetings- Virtually no alternative’ Phillip Grannum, of Cable & Wireless gave a live demonstration of video conferencing by linking remotely with Mike Williams of Polycom.

In the midst of telling the room how great the technology was, they battled with embarrassing sound and connectivity problems. But that wasn’t even the biggest problem – I noticed that lots of people in the audience were talking amongst themselves. It was as if they were watching the telly and did not feel actively engaged in the proceedings. Despite the fact poor Mike Williams could see and hear the audience from his remote office, they obviously did not feel they were being rude by talking through his presentation.

Simon Hunt from Regus Venues went on to announce the opening of 14 ‘telepresence suites’ and wax lyrical about the savings one could make by using them.

“You can save as much as 69 per cent on a physical meeting – you can’t afford to ignore this,” he said.

But this figure was based on ten people travelling to New York at a cost of over £12k. Read the small print, and you’ll see, when compared with a smaller, shorter meeting, you might only save 7 per cent.

Better than a poke in the eye with a burnt stick, definitely, but how much might be lost in an important meeting when you cannot see the subtle glint of an eye or smell fear-laden sweat?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m no luddite; I often use my webcam to chat to my nieces in Thailand, who I otherwise couldn’t see. Virtual conferencing will continue to gain popularity, there’s no two ways about it, but – for the time being anyway – it cannot replace the chemistry of live interaction. And sometimes it’s just worth spending that extra money.

The news that meetings industry association Eventia is ready to allow the fatted calves to the slaughter – ahem, I mean, er, allow buyers to join their club - is hardly surprising. Insiders at the association are whispering about huge losses this year making the future of the organisation very difficult and you can rest assured the management team has examined all options to generate revenue streams and cut costs. This measure is a good one and it should have been done years ago.
It has always been desirable for all trade associations to have a bedrock of buyers as its foundation. But in a recession it is imperative. You can imagine the conversations taking place while poring over financial projections up and down the country: “Which of these membership fees generate income for us? This one? OK – cut the rest!”
A few years ago, The Meetings Industry Association (MIA) fiddled with its internal organs while its base of buyers migrated to the Hotel Booking Agents Association (HBAA). Ever since, the supplier membership has followed the flocks to the HBAA until now MIA’s membership is halved and its finances are distinctly parlous.
If you create a trade association that delivers a hard core of valuable customers, supplier members won’t just follow – they will kill you in the stampede. Eventia has done well to reinvent itself while it teetered on the brink of meltdown but now it has a fresh challenge – to grow while cutting costs and compete with other associations fighting for a dwindling supply of members.
The ITM has rebranded as The Institute of Travel & Meetings and entered the events space with a bevy of big corporate members to wave under the noses of interested agencies. Eventia denies this is the reason for the new initiative to attract clients but it seems more than a coincidence that after 25 years of believing client members to be a bad thing for Eventia, it suddenly becomes a great idea the minute the ITM shuffled into the room.
This latest move might be the thing that, if successful, makes Eventia relevant, valuable and successful. The question is: has it come too late?

Usually on a fam trip in another country, you are there to get a view of the venues and attractions on offer – you are not one of the attractions. This, however, is not the case if, as part of a cultural experience in Tokyo, you are a 5’10” blonde woman in a bright red kimono walking around the busy streets of tourist area Asakusa.

Then, I can honestly say, you become the watched rather than the watching. Old people came up to talk to me (in Japanese – and the little bit I can remember from high school suggests, thankfully, they were being very complimentary). Gaggles of schoolgirls pointed and took pictures. It all became slightly surreal. Quite who they thought I was is a matter of conjecture (obviously someone far more important than me), but suffice to say, my 15 minutes of ‘fame’ was certainly an experience.

My second brush with notoriety came when I was greeted at Chintose airport by none other than Miss Sapporo. Being bleary-eyed and having just rolled off an early morning flight, make up-free, bed-headed and smeary of spectacles, it certainly brought me crashing back down to earth to stand next to the teeny tiny pastel pretty beauty queen. It was like Fay Wray meets King Kong.

And, bless them, the Japanese were again armed with their cameras, merrily clicking away to catch the momentous event. The fact that I was presented with a bouquet the size of the Chelsea Flower Show only fuelled the camera frenzy and the staring by the general public.

Thankfully, for the rest of the trip, I managed to keep a lower profile and gain insight into one of the most culturally diverse, fascinating and infinitely polite societies I have ever visited. Interesting venues? Tick. Great food? Tick. Ability to make you feel special (whether you’ve deserved it or not) – for sure. I may never reach the heady heights of red carpet fame, but I can rest assured, I'm Big in Japan.

A quick glance at Eventia’s latest set of accounts tells its own story. By any standards the association had a good year in 2008 and by its own standards it had a super year – it finished with a surplus of £20,000-plus and rectified a distinctly weak balance sheet (Eventia finished the previous year with only six grand in net assets).
Now its merger with the British Association of Conference Destinations (BACD) has been pulled off (although the costs of this are not in these accounts) and the organisation should be in a much stronger position to move forward. But the truth is that 2009 will be tough for Eventia, like many of our industry associations. The accounts for the year ending December 2008 show revenue up - but only marginally - and overheads down by around five per cent. A good result, but you can’t save costs every year and as we head into the bottom of this recession a number of Eventia members are trading close to the wire. How many will be around to renew their membership this year? How many will be moved to do so even if they are still in business?
But that’s not the worst threat on the horizon. Eventia has profited from its educational and networking events activities, providing nearly half its revenues, largely because of generous industry sponsorship and this year sponsorship is proving much harder to find. Revenue from these sources was down in 2008 and will surely continue to head south this year.
Fortunately the merger with the (BACD) will bring economies in the longer term but 2009 will be a tough tightrope to walk for Eventia. For the Meetings Industry Association (MIA), it could be an even tougher spin. At the MIA AGM earlier this year, we were handed a press release that suggested the MIA finances were tickety-boo. “Our annual accounts 2007/8 show us favourably ahead of forecast with a trading loss of £50,427”, trumpeted the release. The profit and loss account and balance sheets weren’t given to the press. But the release was designed to suggest that the MIA’s trading position was healthy and everything was going rather swimmingly.
The real situation is that for the year ending August 2007, the MIA filed accounts with Companies House showing net assets of only £10,819. The accounts don’t show a profit and loss account because they file only abbreviated accounts (a curious thing for a membership-based non-profit organisation to do). However, in the year to 2008, according to the MIA’s treasurer Peter Darnell, the MIA made a trading loss of £50K, meaning that the MIA had a negative balance sheet to the tune of -£39K.
That means the association was technically insolvent but their press releases didn’t say that.
The auditors insisted that membership subscriptions – totalling around £90K for the year – were not brought into 2008 accounts but thrown forward into 2009 because MIA has collected this cash in advance for services not yet delivered. Since the £90K can’t be brought into the accounts it can be argued that the MIA was trading while insolvent with a membership of just 407 – just over half of what its membership once was.
This year will be tough for all of us – but for some of the associations it could be merger time again.

I’m not about to pretend the credit crunch is a good thing – in general it’s downright depressing – but some good things have come from it. People rediscovering their bicycles and learning to cook, a resurgence in the popularity of book clubs and knitting (ok, perhaps the last one is not such a good thing). We’re all finding new ways to make the most of our shrinking disposable incomes and we’re kind of liking it.

It’s a similar story in the events industry; organisers are having to become more inventive to make the most of reduced budgets and some wonderfully fun ideas are springing from it.

I recently met with Julian Stevenson, one of the directors of event agency GSP, which produces media events, product launches and film premiers. As such, his team has always been creative, but increasingly they’re being asked to create the wow factor with woe factor figures. Recent tactics to deliver memorable moments on a shoestring include such simple ideas as offering guests pick ‘n’ mix sweeties to take home instead of a goodie bag. And it’s gone down a storm.

It seems that in times of gloom we regress to that childhood ‘safe place’ where all it takes is a lollypop to put a smile on our faces – who needs expensive Champagne when cherry coke tastes equally good?

Last night’s 'Glastonbrewery' mini festival at London’s The Brewery was a prime example. The 500-odd guests couldn’t wait to take a seat on fake grass and eat pies and hotdogs from paper cartons. I’m not suggesting it was a cheap event to stage, but it must have saved on a silver service meal and it was so much more memorable.

Other excellent ideas showcased at the event were a silent disco where revellers don headphones and dance (it looks totally daft!) and karaoke with a live band which turns even the weakest of warblers into a pop superstar.

All in all I’m looking forward to this summer of innovation. I just can’t wait to see what’s next. On that note, please let us know how you're cranking up your creativity - there may even be a bottle of bubbly (or Cherry Coke) in it for the best idea!

These are tough days for hotel venues – our news section abounds with items that would fall into the ‘T’ category of a SWAT analysis, but precious few that are positive. One of the major threats for hotels and other venues in 2010 is the growth of virtual meetings, such as webinars. In a major survey carried out among M&IT’s readership this month, 70 per cent of corporate buyers said they expect more virtual meetings in the coming year. Get your head around that – it doesn’t mean 70 per cent expect to use them at all (although that would already be a disaster for physical venues) – it means 70 per cent expect to see more of them. That could mean 0 increasing to 1, 2 to 10 or 5 to 20. It could mean, in some cases, a complete migration to online events.

In the survey, only 7 per cent of corporate buyers predict an increase in the number of live events (this is also supported by the agency view) while 56 per cent of corporates predict a further reduction in the number of live events. Significantly, the group of suppliers/venues canvassed are rather more optimistic – I fear they will be disappointed. (For full results of the M&IT Survey, see July/August issue).

One leading agency boss believes this is a temporary ‘blip’ and may not be permanent. George P Johnson VP and general manager EMEA Kim Myhre describes it as “knee-jerk”.

Myhre said: “Cisco, a long-term account, has decided to take their global sales conference virtual this summer. Lots of movement is in that direction. We think the move to virtual has in some cases been a knee-jerk reaction to the economy. It seems cheaper and greener and has a greater reach but they’re still not a live experience. We think it’s a pendulum that will swing back to live events. In future we will see more integration of online and live experiences.”

If Myrhe is right, there is positive news in this for those venues who provide this technology in physical venues so that it can be integrated into a live event. There is also good news in this for those agencies who provide ‘virtual delivery’ of access to meetings – both groups can generate additional revenue streams and these might replace the lost revenue due to the reduction in the number of delegates who are physically present in the venue.

But if Myhre is wrong, and others go with Cisco along a wholly virtual route for some major gatherings, the impact would be profound and Kim’s words may be served back to him for consumption at a later date.

Remember Rod Eddington, the erstwhile British Airways chief? He famously said the business traveller would never migrate to the low-cost carrier.

Don’t worry, Kim, Rod got a knighthood for pronouncements like that…

There are a few things I need in a hotel room when I am on business:
A bed (goes without saying) with good pillows
A shower (ditto)
Towels, numbering two (any more are superfluous)
A hairdryer (alarmingly, it’s the hotel rooms with all the bells and whistles that are usually missing this, and preferably not one that just feels like a pixie breathing on you)
Free wi-fi (it’s the big poshies that charge through the nose for this)
It’s quite nice to have an iron sometimes, too – or at least one that you do not have to wait half-an-hour for
And I’m a toiletry snob – so don’t give me a basket of dross. And if you are going to throw some in – why not toothpaste? It’s what everyone forgets

And in the morning:
Decent coffee (note the word, decent)
Breakfast (and not at £25 a pop for the buffet – not when I can get it for a fiver down the road at a café where the food is lovingly cooked specially for me)

Things I’m not likely to use in a hotel when I am on business:
The pool
The gym (ha ha)
More than one restaurant (I’m often by myself, who am I impressing?)
The spa (who ever has the time?)

There’s comfort, there’s cleanliness, there’s service, and then there’s peripheral faffery.

After years of £300 a room hotel nights, hotels are now promoting incredible cut-price deals to try to drive business in. It’s fairly obvious, in current times, that they’re hurting. The jury’s out as to how hard hit hotels will be long-term, but our own recent survey suggests that while 29 per cent of suppliers and venues are expecting growth in the number of events staged in hotels next year, only 19 per cent of corporate buyers share their optimism.

Don’t get me wrong about the high-class market with the correspondingly high prices – these marble palaces are glorious and I am not averse to staying at them. In fact, I rather like staying at them, if I can quash the underlying fear someone may come up to me and say quietly, but firmly: “Excuse me, I’m not sure you belong here.”

Why the huge prices? Big overheads? Big expansions? Italian marble with underfloor heating? It seems that during the boom, hoteliers lost sight of what people want, and what they actually need. Now it’s a 'needs-must' market, it’s hard to change what’s already done. Those who are a bit leaner and meaner are still suffering, but less so. If what they were providing was perceived as good value already, they would not need the price promotions.

It’s interesting to note the majority of deals are short term – packages with a finite date, rather than a reduction of rates. So, if the market bounces back, will the prices too? How to reduce costs and provide value long-term is a tricky prospect when your business is bricks and mortar (and soft furnishings, and costly heated pools). How can you un-build an empire?

The trouble with a self-congratulatory slogan such as The World’s Favourite Airline is that it will inevitably come back and bite you on the tail fin.

This blog has dipped its toe into the sticky treacle that is employment issues a few times in recent weeks but I can’t resist going back for some more: this time on the subject of BA’s latest proposal. In case you’ve missed it, BA’s Willie Walsh is asking his workers to work for… er… nowt. Yes, you read that right – a big zero or Sweet Fanny Adams. Notionally, this is a gambit to ‘save the airline’. Now I know there’s a recession on but for some reason I find this rather optimistic, given Mr Walsh’s previous relationship with the employees of the World’s Favourite.

His proposal was sent by email to more than 30,000 workers in the UK and it asked them to volunteer for between one week and one month's unpaid leave, or to work unpaid. Apparently BA's chief executive himself has agreed to work unpaid in July, forgoing his month's salary of £61,000. Ouch!

Now maths was never my forte, but my calculator tells me that even if Willie does wave goodbye to his July wad, he will still trouser a nifty £671,000 from his labours for the remainder of the year. So his loss may be a large lump but he will be left with rather more than, say, the cabin crew that agrees to take the red-eye to New York for no reward. And they, like me, can use a calculator - so I suspect this fact will not have escaped them.

Last month, BA announced a record annual loss of £401 million, which Willie blamed on higher fuel bills. But part of the responsibility of the chief executive is to anticipate rising costs and hedge. It seems to me that while rising oil costs and exchange rates may be good things to blame, the buck (and the euro) stops at the desk of the CEO. That’s why he’s paid all that money…

Like BA, little Willie is now in a tailspin and might rue the day he didn’t agree to upgrade that fellow from the pilots’ union.

So summer is finally here (allegedly) and with it comes the lovely flurry of invitations to the season’s annual sporting and social events: Ascot, Henley, Wimbledon, to name but a few.

It should fill us all with excitement but for many, instead of savouring the prospect of supping Pimms in the sunshine, the first thought is 'arggghhh - what am I going to wear!'

Business social events, particularly summertime ones, can present a real dilemma. For men it’s 'can I get away with not wearing a tie/jacket?' and most seem to err on the side of caution and consequently spend a lot of the time mopping their sweaty brows and complaining.

For women it’s all about skirt length, strap width and neckline levels. How do you strike the right balance of corporate and casual? It can be a veritable minefield.

Get it wrong and you can spend the whole day self-consciously hiding away rather than making the most of the excellent networking opportunity.

Help is at hand, however; Keith Prowse Hospitality has teamed up with classically chic fashion brand Jaeger to launch a ‘dress and styling etiquette guide’.

Tips for women include crisp white cotton, silk scarves, statement jewellery and colour block shoes and bags.

Guys seem to be advised to dress mainly in head-to-toe white – looks great on their models but I'm not not so sure how great it will look on anybody a little less Adonis-like. Especially once it's covered in lunch, as inevitably it will be…

Happiness seems to be my buzzword of the day. Lucky me. I’ve been fortunate enough to preview articles by Oxford Motivation’s John Fisher and an interview with Poisson Rouge’s Mark Katz, which will appear in the July/August issue of M&IT. John talks convincingly of the hard business case for thanking staff properly – employees who feel valued for doing a good job contribute hugely to the bottom line. While Katz has launched an online tool enabling businesses to assess just how happy their employees are, for much the same reason – ultimately it affects profitability.

Could it be that along with the hardship and difficulties faced by many during this economic downturn, we are all learning important lessons about the value or otherwise of material things versus the value of recognition, friendship, time and family? About what makes us happy?

Many white-collar professions are coming up with creative ways of cutting costs in the short-term while attempting to ensure they have the skilled staff in place they need when the economy starts to improve. For instance, the Financial Times reports on a contingency plan put in place by KPMG, the professional services firm, that asked its 11,400 employees to volunteer for either a four-day week or a sabbatical of up to 12 weeks on a third of their salary. Eighty-five per cent put themselves forward, of which 30 per cent were men.

It has since been up to management how and when to implement this scheme and so far 750 staff have taken up one option or another.

BBVA, the Spanish bank, has given its nearly 30,000 employees the option to stay away from work for up to five years in exchange for nearly a third of their usual salary and a guaranteed job when they return. The Financial Times is offering staff an extra week or more of summer holiday at 30 per cent pay.

Let’s hope that this more flexible working culture isn’t lost when the good times return. And that the events industry can return to playing its part in helping businesses achieve all they can, particularly in terms of employee recognition and motivation. Roll on, happy days.

How does one best gain sympathy for one’s pay, jobs and disciplinary woes? Stage a demented strike that severely disrupts business in a city already battered by an economic crisis? Bring said city to its knees during peak hours as overland train stations overflow and traffic gridlocks? The London tube strike has been the bane of event organisers, with fears England's World Cup qualifier against Andorra at Wembley Stadium might have to be played behind closed doors. As it stands, it will go ahead despite concerns for the safety of fans travelling to the game, with many of the 70,000 supporters forced to travel by car, even though there is a lack of parking nearby. The FA took the decision last week to halt ticket sales for the game and is now offering refunds for ticket holders who cannot get to the game.

At least two events have been dropped off our office diaries due to the partial strike – one, the Grimaldi Forum Monaco’s ActGreen reception noting it was “red carded” by the RMT Union’s action.

While Tuesday night’s Hong Kong Society’s gala dinner still went ahead – with an excellent turnout - speakers took a tongue-in-cheek swipe at the strike action. As the taxi marshals swung into action, however, talking to visitors from Hong Kong was vaguely uncomfortable. “How is this allowed to happen?” they asked, genuinely confused. I did not dare mention other threats capable of crippling the capital’s public transport system – leaves, snow, “the wrong sort of rain”…..

London can build all the transport infrastructure it likes in time for the 2012 Olympics – one can only hope the people running it decide to play the game as well. Because when the eyes of international visitors (and investors) are on your city, failure to do the simple stuff right is disruptive and damaging – and downright embarrassing.

Has Regus broken the mould? The office management company entered the meetings sector with serious intent when it took the market by surprise in February by selling meeting space on a delegate per hour basis – at a mere six quid a crack, to be precise.

The reaction from the market was immediate – enquiries rose by 31 per cent, according to Regus management. Can you name another venue business that celebrated an enquiry level increase of any description this year, let alone 31 per cent? I can’t.

Just consider what this offer means to the cost-conscious corporate market. The minimum purchase has gone down from the common ‘day delegate rate’ that assumes a minimum of eight hours to a deal that enables a client to buy one, two or four hours. Suddenly there is a motivation to get the meeting finished in quick time. In the past, there was always an incentive to use the entire eight hours – after all, if you have to pay for it, you may as well use it! Now the idea of a short, sharp, well-managed half-day conference has appeal on more than one level – no need for lunch and we can save on tea and biccies.

But let’s get back to the purchasing process. Can you think of other commodities where clients are forced to buy more than they want or need? Desks, for example? Computers? Cars? “Sorry, sir, this car is only available in batches of eight or 24.” Don’t think that would go down well, do you?

But for reasons I don’t understand, the conference and events market has always swallowed the minimum eight hours deal without complaint – until now, that is. Regus has an inventory of 2,500 meeting rooms and they are available online on a per hour basis – bad news for the more established meeting room suppliers already struggling in the teeth of a downturn and being chewed up by corporate procurement. I hear a number of venues have responded in kind and are selling meeting space in smaller units than the old-fashioned DDR already – but they are understandably not shouting about it.

What next? Watch out for the terms and conditions. Regus reckon between 30 and 40 per cent of meetings are cancelled for entirely legitimate reasons in this fast-moving business climate. But Regus is only imposing cancellation charges at 10 days or fewer before the event, where some venues charge from 10 weeks out.

If other venues are forced to follow that, it will hurt their bottom lines badly.

Having a frequent flying companion of 6'8" – that's about 2.05m for the metrically minded - I am probably more sympathetic than most to the ordeals of the super tall. This week's newspapers only served to further my opinion that society does not cater for the tall. Thank you to the Gloucester restaurant that served up this case in point – the 10-year-old that was charged for a full adult meal because he was too tall to be deemed a child. (I would warn him now, if he keeps growing he will have very little luck on water slides, roller coasters and funfair rides in future too. Nor should he pursue an interest in horse riding or driving sport cars.)

And, despicably, the South Carolina funeral home which SAWED OFF the legs of a 6'7" corpse so it would fit in a regular coffin. What do you say to the family? "It's not my fault he didn't fit?"

How does our industry rate in the tall-friendly stakes? Many a time I have sat next to the Tall One as he sits, knees around ears, on crowded planes, the picture of deep vein thrombosis waiting to happen. I have become accustomed to turning up at airports four hours early to try and appeal to airline staff for bulkhead or emergency exit seats. The increasing move towards paying for 'leg room' seats is something of a slap in the face – should you pay more for something you really cannot help?

As for the mass pile-ons of the budget airlines, on rare occasions stewardesses have softened to his plight, letting him on just behind the parents with small children and the disabled. He has talked about starting a campaign to save the 'leg room' seats for the super-tall – though I wonder how well received that would be, given being tall is usually perceived as a 'good thing'.

And its not just planes – he does not fit in regular train or bus seats either. If he stands in the tube it has to be right in the middle of the carriage – at least then he does not need to hold on, he'll just wedge his head against the roof.

Conference organisers – do you think it's wise to squeeze in that extra row of chairs? Fine, I guess if you don't mind someone sprawling out sideways into the aisle. Ditto for those that fix seats with limited leg room to start with. And, if I may add, those that don't have raked floors also pose a problem – nobody wants an obstacle like that impeding their view of the PowerPoint presentation. Thankfully he has good vision and is used to sitting at the back.

Admittedly, he may well eat more than his estimated share of canapes. But, if each generation continues to get taller and taller (as is the case), it's worth asking, where in the world are they all going to sit?

A recent news story piqued my interest – and no doubt sent meeting venue sales staff into spasm. Across Britain, 5,000 Nestle workers – one-third of its work force - are being encouraged to hold “walking meetings” as part of a global fitness drive (no mention of whether this is necessary due to staff over-indulgence in said company’s products).

Nestle has given its workers pedometers as part of a worldwide challenge to find the firm whose staff cover the most ground in four months, with walking meetings one key way of totting up the miles. Customer services support worker Mark Eggington was quoted in The Evening Standard as saying: “When we hold meetings we try to fit walking into them, so we go to the park and walk and talk. It's also possible to take customers for a walk instead of sitting down and having a drink."

Great for company health and camaraderie; great as an in-house incentive; great as a CSR and PR exercise (no pun intended). Not so great for anything involving laptop/on-screen presentations, taking extensive notes or talking over anything highly confidential. Though pro-walkers could claim new hand-held technology enables you to stay connected to the office even while outside it, and I would add that some of the best ideas often come on the hoof, given some fresh air and stimulating surroundings.

It’s not the first walking-related CSR/incentive idea I’ve heard of recently either. Imagination has posited the idea of rewarding people for the walking, running or cycling that they already do, earning points for distances covered which are then converted into charitable donations – along with additional company benefits such as increased retention and the incremental value of cross-sold services and products.

Is it an idea worth getting in step with? In some instances, I would say most certainly. Now all you need is the buy-in of one major, and hard to coerce player: The Great British Summer.

No doubt hoping to ride on the back of the Britain’s Got Talent hysteria which has swept the nation, Event UK has announced its Next Big Thing competition will return this September – bigger and better than before.

Wannabe corporate entertainers will battle it out at two pre-qualifying heats, the first of which will take place alongside the ISES Summer Party and AGM in July. The second heat will be held at the Eventia Summer Party in August, to be followed by the nail-biting final during Event UK at Birmingham’s NEC. The winner will land a ‘lucrative’ contract with industry agent Sternberg Clarke.

Exciting stuff, however, the timing of the announcement has been rather marred by the admittance of Britain’s Got Talent singing sensation Susan Boyle to The Priory clinic with a mental break down.

Poor old ‘Subo’ was said to have been so distraught at losing to dance group Diversity she suffered a panic attack and collapsed.

The BGT production company will be picking up the 48-year-old spinster’s £3,000 a week treatment bill… will Event UK take its duty of care so seriously one wonders? The events industry is no doubt fostering some easily wounded egos.

At least BGT fans won’t have to go cold turkey following the end of the series – Next Big Thing entrant videos will be posted online as they come in, and the competition also has its own Twitter page (@mayamhatre).

As I sat in a press conference staged by those nice Melbourne folk at Imex in Frankfurt last week, my mind wandered back to the home of the Poms, the mother country that spawned the nation Down Under.

It was when the investment project for Melbourne’s new convention centre precinct was being described:

-A$1.4 billion of private capital investment to be repaid over 25 years by the city
-Opening this Friday ahead of time and within budget
-A$580 million of business already booked
-2500 hotel rooms within a one kilometre walk
-5642-seater plenary hall divisible into three

I couldn’t help wondering what we had done to inspire the poor souls we sent to Botany Bay to become such a great nation of positive, ‘can-do’ people while we loiter in the ‘couldn’t possibly’ backwater of defeatism. The Botany Bay point is relevant – Melbourne Convention Centre CEO Leigh Harry is the proud descendant of prisoners sent on the earliest 'assisted passage' programme.

Back in Blighty, London’s efforts to secure a large international standard convention centre with public funding were doomed from day one and now we sit in the cheap seats and watch other nations cross the finishing line ahead of us. We couldn’t fund the building of an earner but it was OK to hand billions over to the losers of our banking fraternity. Even Sarawak has a more modern convention centre than London!

Melbourne CVB CEO Sandra Chipchase – she with the machine gun delivery and an eye for the tasty soundbite – summed it up: “We are defying northern hemisphere logic with more than Aussie optimism. This project has not only washed its face – it’s put on a suit and combed its hair!”

Go, Aussie, go...

I’m all for positive thinking – but when rose-tinted glasses become prisms of self-delusion, it’s time for an eye test.
The talk of the IMEX show in Frankfurt was the economy (stupid), and everyone was desperate to talk it up. Green shoots were mentioned more times than in a season of Gardener’s World and every press conference spoke of imminent recovery.
At the launch of a new survey of the German market, the phrase “ze glass is half full” was used on at least three occasions to present what I thought was very bad news as a reason for a glass of bubbly.
Here’s an example, and I quote: “21.5 per cent of the experts interviewed still expect the number of external events to keep rising – a positive signal for the industry.”
Eh? Now call me a pedant, but I thought it would be interesting to know what the other 78.5 per cent thought. So I asked.
“We don’t know,” said Joachim Konig, president of the European Association of Event Centres. “We didn’t ask.”
I put it to him that the result could mean that 78.5 per cent think the market will shrink further. “You can’t say that,” he replied. I was surprised to find such a romantically inclined interpretation of data by a nation renowned for doing things prudently. But this wasn’t the only example. Elsewhere in the Meeting and Event Barometer 2009 there was another example of looking on the bright side through broken glasses: “Germany is number one Europewide as a meetings destination –far outpacing other EU member states.”
In this survey Germany attracted three times as many votes as Spain – 36 per cent said Germany was number one! What the survey didn’t say clearly was that most of those canvassed were from… er… Germany. Justly proud, but perhaps slightly biased when it came to judging the attractions of the Fatherland!
Another weighty tome was presented at the show by ExCeL under the lofty title: ‘Destination London 2009 - Research trends and analysis for the events industry’. In fact, this was 16 pages of waffle, interspersed with puffery for the sponsors. The ‘research’ was apparently carried out among 300 people and from it we learned such revelations as: “35 per cent thought technology is dictating events, whilst 24 per cent believed events are dictating technology and 41 per cent had no clear view”. Earth-shattering stuff, indeed! How about this one? “29 per cent thought this investment (in transport) was integral in attracting conferences and events to London, 42 per cent of the remainder were undecided and 29 per cent expressed no clear view”. How very informative…
The other outfit eagerly spinning minimal evidence of upturn into an offering of gold, frankincense and myrrh was INCON, the consortium of professional conference organisers. Their 16-pager (although three pages were blank) was also a full colour job expressing the view that everything will be fine by 2010. 'The First Annual Survey of the Global Association Conference Market' was its imperious title. The content? The opinions of… wait for it… ”10 completed responses”. That apparently is all you need for a ‘global’ research project.
According to the report summary, “things are not as bad as they seem” and we media types are the real villains of the piece. The report says: “The popular media in general and, sadly, many of our own media, too, have taken almost masochistic delight in highlighting the acute pain that, undoubtedly, is a characteristic of our current position.”
So, the prognosis is good but the pain is undoubtedly acute. The future is bright, all hacks are masochists and if you want the real facts, contact INCON.
Things may well be improving (and I sincerely hope so), but none of these so-called statistics prove it.

Another day, another scalp claimed by the expenses scandal. And to think it could all have been avoided. Not by our politicians suddenly discovering a moral compass and not by having a system of rules in place for our lawmakers such as have to be followed by us humble voters. No, it could all have been avoided and the taxpayer saved millions if instead of a second-home allowance MPs stayed in hotels.
Peter Hancock, chief executive of Pride of Britain Hotels, is quoted on website caterersearch as saying that the current second-home allowance works out to around £192 a night, assuming MPs spend 120 nights at the House of Commons - more than enough for dinner, bed and breakfast at a reasonable London hotel.
“MPs would then be free of any dealings with landlords or mortgage companies, they would have no laundry, housekeeping or catering worries and those with sufficient private means could, of course, upgrade to larger suites and better vintages at their own expense if they wanted to,” he said.
“Most importantly, they would come into daily contact with the people who work in this industry and might think twice before enacting regulations and tax measures that harm our ability to stay in business.”
Hotel group Travelodge has calculated that it could save the public purse at least £5m if MPs stayed at its Southwark property, a short walk to the House of Commons. And budget hotel group Premier Inn believes that if all public sector hotel stays were switched to its hotels, the taxpayer could save more than £20m.
And it would avoid all that meddlesome capital gains tax business… oh, and the capital gain, of course. Now that’s not going to go down too well.
But at a time when the appointment of Oxford University’s professor of poetry can be rocked by sex, scandal, ambition and intrigue, perhaps there really is nothing left that is sacred.

Apparently Generation Y will not tolerate a bad conference speaker. “Life’s too short,” says the University of Westminster’s Rob Davidson. “They will just leave.”

There was no such fear when the engaging Davidson addressed a recent MPI event on designing meetings for Generation Y, but it was telling when he asked the 'Y-ers' (those born between 1977 and 1995) to identify themselves; we were all skulking at the back of the room like naughty schoolchildren and seated around the doorway – perhaps to make a swift getaway if necessary.

Generation Y is the most demanding generation to walk the planet, Davidson added. “We have to change what we do in order to adapt,” he said, or else they just will not attend conferences.

No longer a stage in a hierarchy, Y-ers are unique, global citizens wanting to be treated as individuals. They embrace new technology, they want constant feedback. They learn visually, and brevity is key. They want to communicate frequently – hence the high use of social networking technology. They care about giving back to a community and green issues, and if you are not teaching them something that can help them get ahead in their job, forget it, they will vote with their feet. Perhaps scariest of all for conference traditionalists, they are not naturally as good at face-to-face networking, instead requiring facilitation of some form.

So, is this the end of conferencing as we know it? Well, as Davidson pointed out, classical conferences just will not motivate a Y-er – but you cannot afford to alienate all those other generations (there are three – traditionalists, baby boomers and Generation X) still operating in the work force by completely changing the agenda.

And as demanding and 'now, now, now' as Y-ers are (yes, me included) – not all of these changes are bad. Y-ers are life-long learners – need if any for more educational events. And short-attention spans aren’t unique to the Y generation – research shows shorter presentations are easier to absorb. Interactivity within an event is surely a means towards better understanding. And, give them a task and even the most petulant Y-er will embrace the joys of human interaction.

So rather than spelling the death of conferences, it may be the end of those day-long talk-fests in which delegates sit sponge-like and silent until coffee break. But really, who enjoyed those anyway?

Remember the old one about the shoe salesmen? You know – two shoe salespeople are sent to Africa by competing companies to find out if the continent is a potential new market for their products. The first returns and tells his boss: “Hopeless! No potential whatsoever – only 10 per cent of the population wear shoes.”
The other returns with the opposite view: “Fantastic potential, boss. Ninety per cent of the population need new shoes!”
Current interpretation of economic indicators might not be as diverse as that, but interpretation of business data can vary dramatically, depending on which economist you listen to. Today the news broke that retail sales rose by 2.6 per cent in the year to April but the Economist Intelligence Unit said its expectation is that the economy would shrink by 4% this year. How can they both be right?
Take this year’s Academic Venue Show at the Emirates Stadium in London. It attracted more than 400 visitors, a 15 per cent increase on 2008. Green shoots, I hear you say! Indication that the market is coming back? Perhaps.
But a curmudgeon might say the academic venue is the first choice for the cash-strapped and an increase in the use of low-cost universities is proof that the recession is deepening.
Which is true?
Search me. You’d better ask a Member of Parliament – they clearly have a better understanding of financial matters than the rest of us.

A press release that landed in my inbox yesterday made me smile. And then it made me think. (And there aren’t many releases ever that have managed to combine the two!)

The Cook Islands Government, it said, has announced that the nation has officially decided not to take part in the worldwide recession, making it the world’s first Recession Free Oasis.
The submission was presented to Parliament earlier this month and the country’s Minister of
Tourism, Wilkie Rasmussen, announced the Government’s endorsement in Rarotonga.

“As industries around the world feel the weight of the current economic global recession and
the international effects of slowing economies and cautious consumers, the Cook Islands is
seeing local businesses grow, new businesses open and offshore investment increase,” he
says. Tourism constitutes 67 per cent of the Cook Islands GDP and its tourism industry is reporting sustained forward bookings with many areas reporting growth.

At a London Development Agency (LDA) consultation event yesterday, some of the great and the good in the travel industry were called upon to submit their ideas on how to help London weather the global downturn; maximise opportunities at the Olympic Games and post-Games. Some of the ideas were predictable – but no less important for that – and some more interesting. And while London and Britain are not as dependent on tourism or as interested in it as the Cook Islands, the figures are still impressive: in 2007 visitors spent around £15 billion and helped support more than 253,000 jobs in the capital.

Equally interesting, however, was the LDA research which suggested the short break market in particular would be hit as consumers tighten their belts. Yet talking to Ray Jones, Superbreak, it is clear that in his area of business, London is proving very popular. Superbreak specialises in, quite obviously, short breaks – hotels plus theatres, concerts and optional rail. They also own West End Theatre bookings, who are taking on additional European staff to help cope with the increased demand at their shops in London. Ray puts London’s current popularity down to favourable exchange rates, making it affordable to Europeans in particular, and an unbeatable programme of cultural highlights from theatre to pop and rock.

And this neatly highlights one of the problems we face: acquiring , reliable. good quality research before it is out of date and then knowing how to interpret it. Of course, if we could all do that, we could join the Cook Islands and have no need to pull ourselves out of recession.

This web site attracted 27,000 visits last week and some of our visitors took part in our user survey – nearly 400 of them. One of them will win a case of fine wine (meetpie.com surfers are discerning and sophisticated folk) but that’s not, I am sure, why they participated in quite a long and time-consuming research with a lot of free text responses needed.
It’s clear that our surfers put a lot of store in the content of the site and we will make sure we adhere to their/your wishes in its ongoing development.
The responses were very interesting - and mostly gratifying – but one response stuck out to me as extremely surprising. We asked: “Do you use social networks in a business capacity?” and 53 per cent answered in the affirmative.
Surprised? You could have knocked me down with a copy of Which PC? Social networks, OK, but in a business capacity?
Amazing – more than half our reader surfers spend their working time twittering or similar. Interestingly, Twitter was not the most popular of the social network sites. It was LinkedIn that was most used – by 66 per cent of those who have used such sites!
So why? I confess we didn’t pose the demographic question but our reader surveys usually throw up a broad spectrum of age groups so I would surprised if this was materially different. What is it about LinkedIn that has captured the attention of event organisers? And will it stand the test of time?
Facebook has famously failed to make a profit despite its popularity and Twitter has barely had time to make a dent in the market. We are on Twitter but use it to drive traffic to our on-line content. Are we missing something?
Call me old-fashioned (and I am), but it seems to me that focusing on the medium is missing the point. New media will come and some will stay but content will remain king – whether the medium is internet, print, video, TV or radio. If content is poor, it won’t matter how you deliver it – it won’t get an audience.

My mother always told me not to play with my food, but it seems this is just what today’s top chefs are doing.

I read on The Times Online that celebrated French chef Pierre Gagnaire is now offering the world’s first fully synthetic gourmet dish at his restaurant in Hong Kong's Mandarin Oriental hotel. He’s been working alongside the founder of molecular gastronomy, Hervé This, to create the jelly ball recipe from chemical compounds. Apparently the ball tastes of apple and lemon; smooth and creamy on the inside and crusty and frosty on the outside – mmm, yummy!

Hervé This believes chemical cooking is the future of haute cuisine and the likes of Heston Blumenthal seem to agree. I must say I’m not so sure. While it offers a great novelty factor, can chemical jelly balls ever really be an improvement on a traditionally made trifle?

I sampled some of this Frankenstein food on a recent visit to Gran Melia’s Palacio de Isora resort in Tenerife. In its restaurant, Calima, Michelin-starred chef Dani Garcia cooks up creations utilising liquid nitrogen. The result is familiar foods transformed with alien textures and covered in pearlescent skins.

It looked pretty but, truth be told, didn’t do too much for my taste buds and actually made me feel a bit sick. Of course we should celebrate creativity, but this seems like a case of the emperor’s new clothes to me.