Paris. Over fifty Meetings Industry leaders, academics, research organizations and related resources met on May 14 and 15 in Paris under the auspices of the Joint Meetings Industry Council (JMIC) to review the current status of progress on documenting and communicating the value of meetings as drivers of economic, academic and professional development and to and make strategic recommendations for advancing this in the future.
“We know from experience that governments are highly interested in the ways our industry can be used to advance their economic and community development agendas, but we have been slow to come up with the kinds of defensible measures for these benefits that can be used to support the required investment” said JMIC President and IAPCO Past-President Philippe Fournier. “The purpose of this conference was to assess our progress toward such measures and to encourage better communications and alignment of the various industry organizations.”
The two day conference took place at the Palais des Congrès de Paris and included sessions that spoke to defining the need for better value measures, supplied case studies of work done to date and reviewed the kinds of data currently generated by both Meetings Industry and global tourism and travel organizations.
Amongst the conclusions and recommendations were:
“The challenge now will be to decide how best to act on these excellent recommendations, which is a task that must be undertaken by a number of industry associations acting both individually and collectively. It will be a challenging undertaking, but one that will have a huge impact on the future of our industry as we simply cannot fail if we want to be taken seriously by our respective communities and governments”, said Fournier.
