| Journal: TWUK | Section: |
| Title: | Issue Date: 26/06/00 |
| Author: | Page Number: 78 |
| Copyright: Other |
Time for consolidation of conference market
AFTER a largely successful Institute of Travel and Tourism event in Las Vegas, I’m left with ‘conference fatigue’ and believe it’s also time for consolidation in this particular market.The ITT conference got off to a disastrous start. An Elvis lookalike singing a few songs was great fun but then we had to listen to no less than five people promoting Las Vegas.
There’s no bigger fan of the world’s gambling capital than me but why do we always have to sit through this ridiculous pandering to the sponsors?
Doesn’t anyone sit down and think ‘hang on, this approach is going to bore the pants off all the delegates?’ Because, believe me, it did.
As I’ve said before, it would be far better to try something new, like a little quiz on Vegas, based on a short video. This would be good fun and would get everyone thinking about the place. A prize of some sort for the winner would add to the excitement.
Organisers of conferences also have to vet speeches to prevent all this tedious plugging of companies by speakers. And we need more time for questions. I don’t think there’s a single conference that builds in enough question time.
But the real problem is that there are just too many conferences these days and consequently we hear largely the same stuff being debated.
There’s a few speakers who can be relied upon to give an excellent and entertaining presentation – like Airtours Holidays’ Richard Carrick and Urbanweb’s Steve Endacott. Consequently they are in great demand and turn up to speak at many of the major events.
In addition, there’s only so many things you can talk about, so we end up hearing about the Internet and ‘change’ until we’re blue in the face.
Under the current format, there’s no way to avoid repetition – you can’t start debating issues that are irrelevant, just to be different. We simply need less conferences.
Surely, ARTAC, Advantage and other independent bodies should get together to have one independent conference? Then we could have the ITT and ABTA conferences, spread evenly throughout the year. Do we really need any more?
I’m shooting myself in the foot, because if anyone listened to me, I’d end up going to fewer exotic and exciting destinations throughout the world. But this feeling of deja-vu when I sit in a conference room is getting too strong these days.