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Business travellers throughout the United Kingdom and Europe are currently faced with two pressing issues that will have a direct effect on their mobility and effectiveness in working from the road.

The first of these is the threat of H1N1 influenza – the now infamous swine flu – which may or may not reach the disastrous contagion predictions of health ministries and world health officials. The second is another year of service cutbacks ­– route cancellations and reduced flight frequency – as the global economy slowly moves into a fragile recovery.

Few events have been so thoroughly hyped in the media as the steady increase in the incidence of the H1N1 virus. In the last six months, the UK has gone from having the highest number of confirmed cases in Europe to its medical authorities announcing they are “tantalisingly close” to containing and preventing future cases of this flu strain.

Yet there are those in the business travel industry, including the leadership of the Association of Corporate Travel Executives (ACTE), who believe that all the media attention and worst case scenarios may be inuring the travelling public to the challenges that will be posed by widespread infection.

Feeding the fever
A recent ACTE survey, which polled a substantial cross-section of the association’s international constituency, indicates that 37 percent of corporate respondents are not seriously concerned about the disease, owing to its apparently mild nature and extremely low mortality rate compared with other strains of flu. Indeed, most of the precautions urged by government health agencies include only the most basic of precautions, such as frequent hand washing and carefully disposing of tissues – which should be used whenever sneezing or coughing.

The extent of public confidence that the disease will simply fade away is manifest in the second finding: 66 percent of companies responding to the survey have no instructions or plans to assist travellers who get caught in airport health screenings or who come down with symptoms of the flu while travelling. This means that travellers will run an increased risk of exposure to infection in the confines of airports, aeroplanes, trams, restaurants and even restrooms.

Yet the most basic, widely counselled advice for anyone with flu-like symptoms is to stay at home, drink hot tea with lemon and wrap up in a snug blanket until the feeling passes. Treat the illness, simply, like an uncommonly bad cold.

Staff infections
But just think of the impact this sensible advice may have on travellers when it is applied to pilots, mechanics, air traffic control personnel, hotel workers, and hundreds of thousands of others who make travel possible. What would travellers experience in the scenario of a widespread – if relatively benign – influenza?

There would be no purpose to a meeting between principals if the hotel or meeting facility staff was so stretched that the service was barely acceptable. Furthermore, it might not be practical to try to attend such a meeting if airline personnel were also stretched to the limit. It may not even be possible: it is fair to assume that service cuts would immediately occur in such an event.

Travellers too, it is assumed, would be less likely to risk exposure to the virus as a natural precaution. This shifts the emphasis of H1N1 preparation to two other levels: the first lies in minimising exposure while travelling, while the second calls for complete familiarisation with electronic travel and meetings alternatives.

Salient solutions
While it is hoped that the disease will not reach predicted proportions, travellers are already facing service restrictions and cutbacks from carriers and hotels facing some of the tightest operating budgets in the last 20 years. Route cancellations have become commonplace as airlines have moved to meet falling demand and hotels, especially the luxury sector, struggle to meet service standards with reduced support staff.

According to ACTE’s October 2009 travel spend survey, this trend is likely to continue well into next year. 50 percent of respondents claimed their travel budgets will remain unchanged for next year, 25 percent said they will spend more on travel for 2010 and the remaining 25 percent said they will spend less. This effectively guarantees a very slow recovery for the business travel industry and consequently the leisure market as well.

The slow global economic recovery, coupled with the potential for additional service disruptions from swine flu, makes it advisable for travellers to familiarise themselves with an electronic alternative to meetings or travel.

Technological advances, along with a substantial drop in operating costs, have given rise to the popularity of these systems as a complement to air-travel. They will prove themselves invaluable for business travellers and the self-employed should they be faced with restricted flight options or reduced economic circumstances, be this due to a weak strain of flu or a weak recovery.

One of the most interesting recent conclusions of the business travel industry, learned at the feet of an enduring recession, is that electronic travel and meeting alternatives have great potential as well as known liabilities.

They are not a substitute for the face-to-face relationship-building process, but they do have a permanent place in an effective, modern travel policy.

The collapsing global economy is battering the meeting and event industry. Corporate leaders are postponing or eliminating any expense for which a strong business case cannot be made or is not affordable. Most leading economists predict it will take years for equity markets and the global economy to recover. A tsunami-scale ripple effect is being felt in the meetings industry.

Large numbers of meetings and meeting planner jobs are being cut. Most, if not all, off-site larger meetings are under scrutiny by CEOs and CFOs as candidates for down-sizing or elimination. Most meeting planners in major public companies say that half or more of all their off-site meetings have been cut for 2009 including their annual convention and large conferences.

Survival threats
Meeting professionals and event managers are under enormous pressure to justify their meeting expenditures – and their jobs. Heads of corporate and association meeting and event departments are downsizing staffs as the number of meetings shrink. A strong business case needs to be made to maintain meeting planners on the payroll when outsourcing is available.

The tragic disconnect is that while overall industry research shows that meetings and events generate the highest ROI of any marketing expenditure, most individual meeting professionals are incapable of proving that their specific meetings deliver meaningful business impacts and ROI.

Job security and company survival are fast becoming job one. The toll on jobs throughout the meeting industry is beginning to be felt in many key sectors; airlines, hotels, conference centres, training and production companies, exhibit companies and a whole host of specialty suppliers. They are facing plummeting sales and difficult times ahead. A frightening number of these businesses, large and small, may not survive in the months ahead.

Some associations are seeing meeting registration revenue from members levels fall by 35 percent or more with supplier participation down dramatically as well in 2009, plus membership renewal revenue slipping as members’ budgets become more restricted. Professional and trade association may be forced to curtail some member services and events as their revenues shrink.

Cost justifications for large corporate meetings are being required and reviewed at the highest levels in companies today – now spurred on even more by the glare of a public spotlight President Obama is shining on large meetings in companies receiving TARP money – which is also illuminating large meetings in all companies. Greater public visibility of large meetings is triggering many corporate leaders’ instincts to duck and cover instead of defending and protecting valuable meetings that deliver proven business results.
We should identify, preserve and protect meetings and meeting professionals that deserve to survive.

Survival strategy
Learn from Darwin. Adapt. Develop new abilities to succeed in this environment.
Here are step-by-step measures to achieve this:

A. Think both short-term survival and long-term renewal:
Short-term, adopt a triage approach. Identify and invest only in essential meetings that will drive organisational performance, meetings that deliver proven business impacts and demonstrate a positive ROI.

Long-term, raise your game. Renew yourself as a more valued professional. Learn how to design results-driven meetings and how to prove their value with measurable results including ROI.

B. Adopt a New Strategic Mindset:
Meetings that deliver real value (measureable results/positive ROI) deserve to survive.

Understand and accept the new reality. In these difficult economic times, and probably forever after, any expenditure for a large meeting will have to be justified with a strong business case – specific, measurable, value-driven business objectives, a rationalised budget and an assessment plan.

C. Change C-level perceptions of meetings from an expense to a valuable investment:
Corporate leaders need to understand and view meetings as justifiable investments that deliver measurable value to improve organisational performance.

The meeting Industry should band together in common cause to communicate and promote the value of meetings to corporate leaders and meeting owners. Promote meetings as professional communication events for which a strong business case can be made, that deliver real value – measurable results, business impacts and ROI that drive organisational performance.

Meeting industry leaders – associations such as MPI, PCMA, etc and major corporate meeting and event sponsors including  hotels, airlines, credit card companies, etc – should form an industry consortium and become highly visible, vocal advocates – everyone participates, supports and carries the messages.

D. Set new standards for meeting value and effectiveness:
Raise the level of expected value from meetings – the efficacy of a meeting.

Adopt and standardise on a meeting value chain approach that drives design, implementation and measurement of meeting results, one that will insure high-value, effective meetings with outcomes that produce strong meeting business cases

E. Train, develop and certify meeting professionals with results measurement skill sets:
1. Teach meeting professionals a process for developing measurable, results-driven meetings that deliver business impacts and financial results.
2. Teach meeting professions how to measure meeting results and ROI.

F. Elevate the professional image of meetings and meeting professionals:
Make meetings more effective by recommending, supporting and providing the development of meetings that deliver measurable results.

Start surviving today – action steps
1. Identify and preserve meetings which are indispensible – that can be proven to deliver high value, measurable results including ROI.

Measure the largest, most expensive, most important meetings that have taken place during the past four to six months using an ROI Snapshot Survey or other ROI measurement process to determine a meeting’s business impacts and ROI.

Analyse and decide whether or not a business case can be made that those meetings deserve to be repeated in the future.

2. Eliminate meetings that have performed poorly from being repeated or redesign them to deliver significantly greater value.

3. Future Planned Meetings – design meetings to insure they deliver the highest value at the lowest cost. Build a solid, fact-based meeting design that insures delivery of real business value and a measurable ROI whenever possible.

Measure pre-meeting values to define the essential value chain that the meeting must produce.

Build a business case for the investment. Design the meeting to achieve outcome values.

Measure post-meeting – levels 1-3 results within a couple of weeks and levels 4-5 (business impacts and ROI) results within three to six months.

4. Establish value standards and tracking of meeting effectiveness over time – with industry benchmarks developed and made available to all.

To assist their members to make a strong business case for attending annual association meetings for next year, a demonstration of the ROI generated by individual attendees of this year’s annual association meeting would be a strong investment justification to attend again.

With a modest investment in a post-meeting ROI survey, information about an individual member’s ROI produced from the annual meeting could be provided to individual attendee members as well as reporting and promoting member attendees’ overall ROI averages to stimulate annual meeting attendance for the coming year.

A golden lining – renewal
There is a golden lining in this economic calamity for meeting makers who are willing to seize this moment as an excellent opportunity to raise their game. By improving the effectiveness and value of their meetings by delivering measurable business impacts and ROI, they can change the way their meetings and themselves are perceived and respected by C-level leadership.

We can come through this difficult time having transformed meetings into indispensible communication events respected for having a professional development process that produces credible, measured business results – and an industry dedicated to professional meeting results standards and clarity of contribution equal to any other professional-level endeavor in business.

ACTE held its Global Education Conference in Prague, 25-27 October 2009.