Four Things Meeting and Event Planners Don’t Want

We know what meeting planners want when researching a destination, but it’s just as interesting to look at what they are avoiding. Sometimes destination marketers get so stuck in their ways that they don’t realize a certain practice has become outdated.

DCI’s latest report, “A View from Meeting Planners: Winning Strategies in Destination Marketing,” delivers the insights that destinations and convention bureaus need to attract meeting planners. It’s also a useful compass to help you realize if your efforts are taking your organization in the wrong direction when it comes to attracting meetings, events, and incentive travel.

These four things are at the bottom of meeting professionals’ wishlists, and knowing what they are avoiding will help guide your marketing strategies.

1. No inefficient contact

Meeting planners made it clear that they don’t want you getting too close to their personal forms of communication. Only two percent want (unscheduled) calls and absolutely no one wants texts. Remember that planners are working remotely and in different time zones around the world, making it easy to miss a phone call or text.

Just seven percent appreciate you slipping into their direct messages on social media. Keep it professional and stick to emails. Some younger meeting professionals are OK with social media, but email is always the safer choice. It’s healthy for both parties to keep work and life communications as separate as possible—and deeply unhealthy when they are too intermingled.

2. No social media

Well no social media is a bit harsh, but planners don’t want to scroll endlessly to get intel on your destination. While more and more are using it, overall, only 16 percent use it to inform their perceptions about a destination compared to 78 percent who prefer meeting with representatives. 

Newer meeting professionals with less than six years of experience are more likely to rely on social media for information about your destination, but even then, only 25% reported using social networks.

And for those who do use social media, ditch Discord, X, Twitch, Threads, and Pinterest, which were not cited as useful by any respondents in the survey. Concentrate on the networks that meeting professionals are using, instead.

3. No case studies

Planners like your websites, but they don’t need a ton of case studies. Only 15 percent of planners said they’d invest time reading case studies. With such a dependence on more personal forms of communication like meeting with representatives and word of mouth, caes studies are nice, but not as reliable as engaging with someone about their experiences directly.

Prioritize other elements of your website—like the contact page—instead. If you must design a case study, be sure it’s visual and light on text.

4. No worries about industry concentration

Destinations often boast how they are the heart of the life sciences industry or they have a high concentration of tech companies nearby. Planners don’t really care that much. Only two percent shared that this information was important, meaning convention bureaus can lower the energy spent on showcasing these industry connections.

It’s not necessarily detrimental, but the work may be falling on deaf ears. But if anyone is actually listening, you could inadvertently pigeonhole your destination if you insist too much on your link to a certain industry!

Be the destination that meeting planners want to return to time and again. Get in touch with Pamela Laite at pamela.laite@aboutdci.com to learn more about leveraging data from “A View from Meeting Planners: Winning Strategies in Destination Marketing” to level up your MICE marketing strategies.