MEETINGS MEAN BUSINESS FOR WISCONSIN
Tourism = Commerce
The U.S. Travel Association is a non-profit trade organization that represents the country’s $740 billion travel industry. Their national campaign, “Meetings Mean Business,” provided further impetus for Wisconsin to take a stand on asking Wisconsin companies to keep their meetings in Wisconsin as a way to hasten the state’s economic recovery, maintain jobs and contribute to the growth of commerce in Wisconsin.
Fundamental Question: What is Relationship of Business Travel to Company Performance?
New research conducted by global research firm Oxford Economics establishes the first clear link between business travel and business growth.
* For every dollar invested in business travel, companies realize $12.50 in incremental revenue.
* Curbing business travel can reduce a company’s profits for years. The average business in the U.S. would forfeit 17% of its profits in the first year of eliminating business travel. It would take more than three years for profits to recover.
* According to business travelers across all industries, 25% of existing customers and 28% of revenue could be lost to competitors if customers were not met in-person.
* Both executives and business travelers estimate that roughly 40% of their prospective customers are converted to new customers with an in-person meeting compared to 16% without such a meeting.
* More than half of business travelers stated that 5-20% of their company’s new customers were the result of trade show participation.
* Supporting the Oxford Economics study is this: According to a recent survey of Fortune 1,000 Chief Marketing Officers, meetings and events provide the highest return on investment of any marketing channel.
Jobs and Tax Revenue at the National Level
Here’s more from the U.S. Travel Association:
* Business travel creates 2.4 million jobs nationally. Meetings and events are directly responsible for 1 million jobs.
* An estimated 200,000 travel jobs were lost in 2008 and another 247,000 are expected to be lost in 2009.
* Business travel is projected to have decreased at a rate more than three times that of leisure travel in 2009 (-6.2% compared to -2.0%).
* Business travel accounts for $39 billion in tax revenue at the federal, state, and local levels.
Where Wisconsin Stands
* According to research conducted for the Wisconsin Department of Tourism by outside research firm Davidson-Peterson, meetings & conventions accounted for 11% or $1.4 billion in total travel expenditures in Wisconsin in 2008.
* From 2000 to 2008, meetings & conventions was the fastest growing segment of travel in Wisconsin. That was prior to the recession. Some areas are projecting declines of 15% for this segment in 2009.
Calculating Dollars Generated Every Time a New Meeting is Booked in Wisconsin
In reviewing areas of the state that host a predominant number of meetings & conventions and then tracking hotel properties that typically host those business functions, the math adds up this way:
For every additional 25-person meeting booked in the state, there would be 15 room nights each night x an average of 2-nights stay x 1.5 average number of people per hotel room x average daily expenditure of $214 x 1.64 (multiplier that takes into account the number of times money circulates within the local economy) = $15,793.20
This is a conservative estimate based on a sampling of statewide findings for just one additional 25-person meeting.
