Meeting News - December 21, 2009 - (Page 8)

Newsmaker IMEX Chairman Bloom Sets Stage For Las Vegas Show Chairman of the IMEX Group Ray Bloom MN: Are these hosted buyers only corpospoke with MeetingNews editor-in-chief David rate and association employees, or do you Meyer this month, providing further insight into include third parties? his plans for importing to Las Vegas in October 2011 the model that has worked successfully for Bloom: Definitely all of them. The third parthe seven-year-old IMEX trade show in Frank- ties are representing the corporate and associafurt, Germany. To tion market. They make that a reality, place a great deal of Bloom said that he business and are an has hired as president extremely important of IMEX America ingredient of this Kimberly Meyer, who market. I have already will build a staff of 10 met with some of the in Chicago. major third parties— IMEX America’s or intermediaries, as Meyer, founder of I call them—and Meetings Analytics, some of them already which provides conhave agreed to work sulting services to Forwith us. tune 500 companies, previously served as MN: Will you host vice president of corpobuyers from the rate development for three groups in BCD Meetings & equal number? Incentives’ predecessor, IMEX Group chairman Ray Bloom WorldTravel Meetings Bloom: The asso& Incentives, and ciation side is differworked for Mellon ent than the rest. Financial Corp. Whether it’s meetings or incentives, all the rest A key element of the IMEX model is the hosted are corporate. Therefore we have to define very buyer program, a concept Bloom pioneered in the closely the association side, so we want to make meetings industry when founding the long-run- sure a good proportion of the 1,500 are associaning Geneva-based IBTM trade show. tion meeting planners. I’m not setting any other numbers on that. MeetingNews: I understand that you are However, the action we’re taking already is that planning to bring about 1,500 hosted buyers we’re working with the American Society of to the IMEX America show. Association Executives, which will have an education day before the show. We’re also in very Ray Bloom: It will be a minimum of 1,500 serious discussions with Professional Convenhosted buyers, all of whom have to place inter- tion Management Association, who we already national business, and we’ll accommodate buy- work with in Frankfurt. ers who only do business in the United States as The evening before the show, we’ll do as we well. Those are just the hosted buyers. Already on do in Frankfurt, which is hold an association the feedback I’ve received, we’re going to easily meeting of all the hosted association buyers with make the 1,500 hosted buyers. the suppliers participating in the show. That’s a We’ll have a major marketing campaign to kind of curtain raiser, and it’s been very successbring in a few thousand non-hosted buyers, ful. With Meeting Professionals International using special packages to make it attractive to being the strategic partner in this, we’ll be workthose who are paying their own way. ing closely with them. Site also is booking their 8 MeetingNews December 21, 2009 conference alongside IMEX America 2011—the show closes on Thursday and that evening will be the opening reception for the international Site conference. MN: When did you get into this business? Bloom: In 1983, I already was in the incentive business, and a partner of mine and I started by creating the Incentive show in the United Kingdom, which was premium incentives without travel. That was a great success. We decided to do something in travel and make it pan-European, so we went to Geneva where we found the halls to launch IBTM. MN: When did you first start using a hosted buyer program? Bloom: About seven months out from launching IBTM in 1988, I had been working the databases and realized no one was going to come to the show. We came up with an idea that was really based on readers’ offers that you get in consumer publications. We contacted all the trade magazines in Europe and said, we would like you to bring your readers to the show and we’ll pay for it. They all said yes. MN: How will the IMEX America hosted buyer program differ from the one in Frankfurt? Bloom: In Frankfurt, we have more than 3,700 hosted buyers, and 85 percent come from Europe. Here with 1,500, we expect 20 percent will be international, and containing that demand will be the issue, I think. MN: Are you concerned about Reed Travel Exhibitions’ plan to launch its Americas Incentive, Business Travel and Meetings Exhibition in June 2011? Bloom: I know what we are focusing on and all we need is to concentrate on what we’re doing. That applies to all shows. Good luck to them, but we’re focused on re-creating IMEX here in the United States, adapted to this market. We see a need that we’d like to fill, and that’s it. r www.meetingnews.com http://www.meetingnews.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Meeting News - December 21, 2009

Meeting News - December 21, 2009
Contents
Newsmaker
Viewpoint
Meetings Spotlight
Association Watch
Construction Cites
Event Profile
Meeting People
Dateline: Mississippi
Dateline: Las Vegas
West Regional
Planner’s Choice Awards
Travel Dashboard

Meeting News - December 21, 2009