Your association’s success is directly linked to the satisfaction and success of your members, and your meetings and events are vital in providing them with the solutions, tools, and connections they need to solve their problems. While this is probably obvious to anyone working in events and meetings services, it likely isn’t as common sense to all your stakeholders who play a role in your conference site selection. Guiding meeting location decisions with your stakeholders versus reverting to history and habit or worse – your chair members’ vacation bucket list location- will result in a more effective conversation.
There are several key factors to explore with your stakeholders to ensure your event location aligns with your members’ needs and your association’s mission:
1. Timing Is Everything
Before you even start to think about where your event should take place (and believe me, your stakeholders have opinions), ensure that your conference avoids conflicts with other industry events, ideally with no overlap within two weeks. With timing follows climate considerations — comfort and the attendee experience. If your event is in January and your members are accustomed to a Golf Tournament, geographically you are limited in options. Additional attendee considerations include avoiding peak/busy times for your industry and the date pattern preference for your membership.
2. Geography & Rotation
Understanding where your membership base is concentrated is a good second step. Try creating a heat map that can be shared with all your stakeholders, so they have the data to help drive their decision on site location. This can also help inform the importance of rotating regions (East, West, Midwest) for fairness and accessibility. Additionally, you should consider flight availability & transportation access — airports, direct flights, public transit. This is also a perfect time to consider market saturation of events in the same city while weighing up popular past cities vs. introducing new destinations.
3. Budget Basics
Wanting a resort property in February in Florida may not align with your attendee budgets. Make sure you have a clear understanding of your attendee room rate tolerance and be sure to include the rate after taxes and service charge. These rates align closely with your space considerations – understanding your room to space ratio will guide your site selection options. Let’s be honest, Association Annual Conferences are notorious space hogs and there is only so much lipstick you can slap on a pig to make your bid attractive to hotels or convention centers. Make sure you are realistic in your rate expectations and that they align with your desired locations.
4. Experience Beyond the Meeting
Although we know how important the actual conference is, we cannot deny that the destination city also sways participation. Know what factors are most important to your attendees in a site – whether that is on or off property. What on-property entertainment and amenities rank highest — do your attendees want a resort feel, a balance between work and play; or a large, flexible lobby bar as a hub for networking and informal meetings? If offsite is important as well, then understanding what nightlife and dining options are close and walkable will be an important factor.
5. Hot Button Issues
Finally, do not forget to think about other areas of importance to your attendees from safety/security to inclusion and/or sustainability. All Associations are different, so ensure that the site you choose is aligned with your mission.
Final Thoughts
Did you notice that nowhere in these recommendations did I mention your Chair’s favorite vacation spot? Site selection for your Annual Conference affects all your members, so it is imperative you keep their needs and expectations at the top of your mind. To take away some of the emotions in this process, I recommend utilizing a Site Selection Survey that involves a cross-section of your stakeholders on the key categories listed above. These results can serve as your Matrix to compare sites resulting in a thoughtful, balanced selection process.
Before you start planning your next conference, make sure you’ve crafted a comprehensive site selection matrix that’s based on your unique association’s needs. Not sure where to start with the site selection process? Reach out to RGI to learn more about how our expert meetings team can help your association find your perfect site.
Emilie Perkins, CMP Fellow, CAE, CMM, PMP, EDC, HMCC
Emilie Perkins, CMP Fellow, CAE, CMM, PMP, EDC, HMCC, joined RGI in 2019 as Director of Client and Conference Services. With over 21 years of experience with strategic meeting management, marketing and design, she has extensive strength in collaboration, fiscal accountability, strategic planning and communication. Emilie has designed, executed and evaluated over 1000 meetings of all sizes and types. She is also an Adjunct Faculty at Indiana University where she has co-facilitated the Nonprofit Meeting Management Course since 2017.