April 2006
Meeting Attendance Goals in the Northeast
Demographic and transportation advantages can make Northeast destinations worth the investment
By Patricia D. Sherman


Convention and trade show destinations in the Northeast — including New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, the District of Columbia and Virginia — have two features that set them apart from other meeting destinations in North America. The first, of course, is population density. From Virginia to Massachusetts, no city is farther than a six-hour drive from more than a quarter of the U.S. population. For shows, that means unparalleled access to markets. For associations, the high concentration of academic institutions, organization headquarters, government employers and general membership can mean record-breaking attendance.

The second is transportation. If they’re not already there, North American and international attendees can get to the Northeast easily and move about efficiently when they’re there. No other region is as rich in international airports and Interstate highways. Add to that Amtrak connections along the Northeast corridor, particularly the high-speed Acela Express service that links cities from Washington, DC to Boston, and extensive metro rail systems.

“No doubt, the population density and transportation access in the Northeast are great attendance draws. Associations reach a lot of their membership when they have meetings there,” says Scott Lindley, Vice President of Marketing for Arlington, VA-based IMN Solutions (http://imnsolutions.com), which manages meetings for 85 associations.

Three of the top 25 cities that host the most trade shows are in the Northeast, according to the Exhibit Industry Census II, released by the Center for Exhibition Industry Research in 2005. New York hosts 419 events annually and offers 23.5 million net square feet of space. Washington, DC hosts 295 events and offers 8 million net square feet, and Boston hosts 210 events in 5.2 million net square feet. (For comparison, the numbers for Las Vegas, at the top of the CEIR list, are 780 events and 48.7 million square feet and for Chicago 431 events and 26.3 million square feet.)

For many organizers, however, the strong allure of population concentration and accessibility is tempered by generally higher costs for exhibitors and attendees. “The Northeast is more expensive than any other region,” Lindley says. “Associations have to balance demographics and transportation against the higher costs of labor, convention center rental and the higher cost of room rates and food for attendees.”

Demographic Jackpot
Nowhere is this balance more problematic than in New York, at the heart of the nation’s population concentration. Demographically, New York is the event destination jackpot. In the tri-state metro area alone, there are more than 12 million people, says Tim McGuinness, Senior Vice President Convention Sales and Convention Center Expansion for NYC & Co. Inc. (www.nycvisit.com). The city drew a record 41 million visitors in 2005 and is expecting more than 43 million this year. “People just want to come to New York,” he says.

That’s true, says Lindley. “Our organizations would like to go there if they could convince their membership that $400 a night for a room is a good deal. Of course, somebody must be paying, or they wouldn’t be charging that.”

“Attendance at our annual meeting is always higher on the East Coast because of the concentration of our membership. We had a meeting in New York in 1999, and our members loved it,” says Marlene Hight, Convention Manager of the American Economic Association (www.aeaweb.org), Nashville, TN. “But it’s too expensive now. It doesn’t look like we’ll be going back.”

McGuinness acknowledges, “There are going to be groups that will work here and others that will not. We’re at the high end of the spectrum of hotel and labor costs. That’s reality. But organizers should look at their return on investment.”

If the draw of New York is so strong that attendees and exhibitors are willing to pay higher prices, the return can be significant. “Of course we had budget concerns, but the attendance in New York was so high that the increase in revenue far offset our costs. We had a substantially higher profit,” says Cathy Nash, CMP, Director, Annual Meetings Department, American Psychiatric Association (APA, www.psych.org), Arlington, VA.

The association held its annual meeting in New York in May 2004. Attendance was a record-breaking 26,728, and exhibits spanned 320,000 square feet at the Javits Center. “Attendance was better than in San Francisco in 2003 and Atlanta in 2005. It was so successful that we’ve decided to rotate to New York every four years rather than every eight.”

Problems expected did not materialize, says Nash. “Union issues were nonexistent.” Shuttling attendees from Mid-town hotels to the convention center “was no more challenging than in other cities.”

The APA was so pleased with New York that a smaller meeting is scheduled there in October in hopes of boosting attendance, says Nash. “We would normally expect about 1,600, but we’re hoping for 1,900.”

Even when organizers and attendees are willing to pay for a New York meeting, they may face undersupply, McGuinness says. “We don’t have enough meeting space or enough hotel rooms. We’ve had an incredible two years, but the downside is that we’ve had to turn people away.”

The city is taking steps to meet demand, but it will be several years before more space is on the market. An expansion of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center is finally under way, with official groundbreaking tentatively set for May. By 2010, the facility will offer more than a million square feet of exhibit and meeting space and a 1,200-room headquarters hotel across the street. Bids have been solicited for development of Pier 94 and Pier 92 on Manhattan’s West Side, where a 400,000 square-foot space for mid-sized and smaller shows should be open in 2009. For hotel rooms, the near-term outlook is brighter. “We should have another 5,000 rooms in the next 24 months,” McGuinness says.

Big Meeting Anchors
The other two cities in the CEIR top 25, Boston and Washington, DC, anchor the north and south ends of the Northeast transportation corridor. Both draw from the same regional demographic pool, have nearly new convention centers and offer some of the most revered historical and cultural attractions in the country. But each has a special appeal for organizers and attendees.

As in New York, demand for space in Washington, DC, is strong, says Elliott Ferguson, Senior Vice President, Sales and Services, Washington, DC, Convention and Tourism Corporation (www.washington.org). And like New York, demand is driving rates up and tightening availability. “The reality is that we’re not cheap. For some groups, we’re not in the game,” he says.

Lindley says that, with so many association headquarters in the metro area, there’s a strong interest in Washington. “But hotel rates are higher than they should be.” He says pressure should ease when a convention center headquarters hotel is added.

The city’s unique benefits can offset costs, Ferguson says. “Our strongest appeal is Congress. Where else do attendees have the opportunity to lobby during a convention or show?”

For his groups who want a sophisticated urban setting but find New York costs daunting, “Boston gets the nod,” says Lindley. “It has the educational context, but you can find better values there.”

Hight agrees. For price and flexibility, “Boston is more competitive.” She took the Allied Social Sciences Associations Annual Meeting to Boston in January. The three-day event drew nearly 9,000 attendees and used 120,000 square feet of exhibit space at the Hynes Convention Center. Besides being price-competitive, she says, the Boston CVB, hotels and venues were open to the special configurations of the meeting.

“We have to have two or three large hotels close together, and we need 500 suites besides the room block. The universities do most of their hiring at this meeting, so someone might be giving a paper one minute and in a suite interviewing the next. They can’t spend half an hour on a shuttle in between.” The group was very pleased with the hotel cluster of the Westin, Hilton and Sheraton connected to the Hynes, she says. “The feedback from attendees was very good. They want to go back.”

Surprisingly Cost-Effective
Three other Northeast corridor cities, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Atlantic City, are in the thick of things in terms of demography and transportation. The quality of facilities, ease of doing business and value for the investment all surprise organizers, exhibitors and attendees.

Philadelphia is nearly as close to the population center as New York, and transportation is just as good. Philadelphia — which like New York and Washington, DC has some availability problems — is expanding its Pennsylvania Convention Center to a million square feet, more the half of which will be contiguous exhibit space. Completion is projected for 2008-2009. Philadelphia’s historical attractions and museums rival Boston’s, and like Boston, it offers a strong educational context. It also gets high marks from organizers for overall friendliness, ease of doing business, attendee satisfaction and competitive prices.

“Ninety percent of all conventions and trade shows have a higher attendance in Philadelphia than in previous shows,” says Sarah Hines, Spokesperson for the Philadelphia CVB (www.pcvb.org).   

The Modern Language Association (MLA, www.mla.org) saw an increase when it visited Philadelphia for the first time in December 2004, says Maribeth Krause, Director of Convention Programs for the New York-based organization. “Philadelphia is a city that has really come into its own. It’s terrific. That’s the reason we chose Philadelphia for this year’s meeting after we had to pull out of New Orleans,” she says. MLA attendees and exhibitors gave the city high marks for transportation, convenience of the hotels to the convention center, quality of restaurants and museums and, in a time of cutbacks in academic travel budgets, room rates.

Baltimore, with its compact harbor side convention center-hotel complex, also draws raves from organizers and attendees. “The demographics are perfect for our group,” says Amanda Rushing, Director of Meetings, National Association of Elementary School Principals (www.naesp.org) in Alexandria, VA. The annual meeting there in April last year drew 5,000 attendees, an increase of more than 10 percent. “One of the things that made it very attractive for us was that it’s so easy to get in and out of. There’s excellent Amtrak service, and there was plenty of parking. It was cost-effective for the association and for the attendees. We had very strong evaluations.”

Glitzy, gaming Atlantic City may seem like the wild card destination in the Northeast’s deck of history- and culture-laden cities. But it may be just the right card to play for groups that want the demographic reach but a different atmosphere. In fact, when the Philadelphia Candy Show (www.phillycandyshow.com) wanted to “shake things up,” says Maureen Walter, Show Manager for the Retail Confectioners Association, based in Philadelphia, it moved from its long-time site in Valley Forge, PA, to Atlantic City. The move worked. The January event had a 35 percent attendance increase, to 4,500, and nearly doubled its exhibitors, she says. “The exhibitors were thrilled. Sales were up 25 percent. At the same time, costs were favorable to exhibitors. The convention center is state of the art and well-lit, which is important for us. Moving in and out was fast.”

Willing Negotiators
Four second-tier cities in the region have positioned themselves to make the most of the Northeast’s natural advantages and focus on cost control for smaller and mid-sized events. Organizers are delighted with the flexibility of hotels and venues in these cities and a general willingness to negotiate.

“Hartford, CT is a good value for smaller meetings,” says Lindley. The city has a new 540,000-square-foot convention center — connected to a new 400-room Marriott and renovated 392-room Hilton — and a spruced-up downtown, says H. Scott Phelps, President of the Greater Hartford CVB (www.enjoyhartford.com).

One of the first groups to use the new facilities was the International Christian Education Association International (www.ceai.org), Region 2, which includes the Northeast and parts of Canada, says Henrietta Bowers-Jackson, President. The group drew 20,000 attendees, many of them drive-ins, and had 500 exhibitors in September. Bowers-Jackson says the CVB worked with them to negotiate hotel and meeting space rates. “Everyone was overjoyed. We’ve recommended that the national organization bring its annual meeting to Hartford,” she says.

Joan Greiner, an independent meeting planner who brought the American Agriculture Economics Association (www.aaea.org) based in Ames, IA, to Providence, RI, in July, says the 1,700 attendance, one of the group’s highest, was a surprise. “Attendance is usually down on the East Coast. In Providence, it was up from the previous year in Denver.” Costs were also a surprise. “Hotel rates and food and beverage were flat with Denver. I think it was because we were a good match for Providence. We filled the city and got attention. It was easier to negotiate costs across the board.”

In Pittsburgh, the CVB helped the Association for Computing Machinery (www.acm.org) control costs for its annual meeting in November by working with them to negotiate hotel and convention center rates, says Beverly Clayton, Executive Director of the Pittsburgh Super Computer Center and organizer of the event. “Costs were much better than New York, Washington, Philadelphia, Boston and Baltimore, all of which we considered.” More than 8,000 scientists and engineers attended the meeting in November. The set up required five days, she says, “because we install the fastest network in the world for one week. The convention center was very user-friendly.”

Virginia Beach, VA is ideal for groups needing about 2,200 rooms on peak, says Al Hutchinson, Director of Convention Sales and Marketing. The first phase of the city’s new convention center opened last year, and the rest should be completed in December, he says. It will offer a 150,000 square-foot column-free exhibit hall, as well as two ballrooms and meeting rooms. One of the facility’s innovative features is 10- by 10-foot etchings on the exhibit floor. “That can save exhibitors up to a day in time and cost. The convention center is city-owned and run by the CVB, so organizers only have to deal with one entity. They don’t have to bring along a third party to negotiate.”

Customized Web sites
One of the most ambitious Web site customizations is in Philadelphia. The marketing communications department works with selected conventions to develop a custom site featuring Philadelphia and special events in the city at the time of the convention. Most of these sites see an average of 5,000 page views. In 2005, the AIIM ON DEMAND trade show received 6,376 page hits, and the BIO 2005 convention received 7,373.

Baltimore’s in-house team customizes Web sites that include links to housing, registration, convention home page and other information on the city. Providence and Washington, DC, have added customized micro sites accessible from the CVB Web site.

New online tools
Philadelphia has added several online attendance-building tools — from pre-registration through show evaluation. The Electronic Convention Promotion Program encourages potential attendees of selected conventions to register and extend their stay in Philadelphia. Registered attendees receive customized e-promotions at regular intervals. In the convention center, attendees and exhibitors can complete an online intercept survey posted on computer kiosks and wireless tablet PCs. The information is collected in real-time, so any issues can be immediately identified and solved. The results are shared with show organizers.

Virginia Beach just rolled out a business center on its Web site. Organizers can build their own maps with convention center, hotels and off-site venues — all of which can be printed or e-mailed. They can also create postcards with their logo to be sent as a hard copy or e-mail blast. In addition, Virginia Beach recently added Passkey, an online housing and reservation system that streamlines the reservation process and helps organizers manage room blocks.

Other attendance-building services
Providence’s in-house marketing department prepares collateral so that production costs for show organizers are nominal, if at all. The CVB can also produce lists of potential attendees using SIC codes.