IT&ME

Post by TMM guest blogger
Lauren Stout, Director of Sales

Once again - That time of year has come and gone – the time when we “pack up our wares” and head to one of my favorite cities in the world for IT&ME's The Motivation Show held at Chicago’s McCormick Place. Every year I look forward to walking around the show, meeting new friends and old friends and being able to see what our industry has accomplished in a year. This was my third time attending and you think I would learn one important lesson as I was traipsing through the largest convention center in the United States, bring flats! Although I chose fashion over function and stepped out in my favorite leopard high heels, nothing could stop us as the heels hit the pavement hard and another successful IT&ME trip was under our belt.

Some highlights this year included changing the backdrop of our booth, which got great feedback. We shared our booth with our Northern California-based DMC partners Cappa & Graham and expanded our focus to represent California as a whole. The goal of our strategic marketing alliance with this company is to broaden the scope of our service to include the entire state of California. This allows for a greater depth of client service and knowledge for all of our customers.

Those who attended this year's show would have also noted that the overall attendance was down because of cost cutting measures on behalf of many clients and hotels. While there were not as many representatives from each client company, we were still able to speak with a number of key contacts from companies in our client base, which is the most rewarding for us. As our business becomes less personal and more digital, it is an invaluable rare opportunity to visit with our clients face – to – face. I spoke with a particular client of mine regarding her upcoming program, and in 10 minutes we had an entire day and evening itinerary planned for her group. This is after months of email correspondence and back and forth trying to decide what the ideal experience would be for these attendees.

As the economy shifts and business practices adjust to fit those changes, we have seen new relationships between DMCs and hotels forged, and together we keep moving forward to continue the momentum our industry. For TMM, we had some very good quality booth traffic and the 2008 ITME show was an overwhelming example of “quality vs. quantity."