SITE
How did we get here ?
SITE ’ S SURVEY OF CORPORATE PLANNERS THROWS UP SOME INTERESTING NUGGETS , SAYS THE ASSOCIATION ’ S CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER , PÁDRAIC GILLIGAN
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ITE ’ s recently released Incentive Travel & Motivational Events Survey ( with thanks to Hilton ) focuses on three aspects of a corporate event organiser ’ s work ( selecting destinations , managing relationships and measuring success ) and , in a future column here , I look forward to delving into its results in full .
For now I want to focus on what might be considered peripheral elements , the demographic questions that we posed for context at the start of the survey . Here ’ s a snapshot of who responded to the survey by industry vertical :
Career Path – How did I get here ? The first peripheral question concerns career path , or the course of study a planner undertakes prior to becoming an event professional .
The standout data point for me here is the very low incidence of ‘ vocational ’ preparation among this cohort of corporate planners , with only 18 % having a formal qualification in what might be regarded as the most obvious feeder course for a job in our sector .
Are corporations not hiring specifically for dedicated , specialist , stand-alone roles in MICE planning ? Obviously not . Do their HR departments see Business Events as a profession at all , or is it simply an extension of the Marketing department ? Clearly , they are unaware that business events is an industry with a GDP equivalent of USD $ 1.6T .
A higher percentage of the cohort ( 20 %) have a business events certificate – CMP , CMM , CIS , CITP , DES etc - presumably acquired through a professional association . These at least provide a platform for professionalism .
Among the other qualifications , unsurprisingly , are business related degrees and diplomas ( Commerce , Law , Business and MarCom which together constitute 52 %) and , perhaps a little counterintuitively , Humanities or Arts degrees ( 16 %).
Above : Pádraic Gilligan
n You can find the full results of the Incentive Travel & Motivational Events survey on SITEGlobal . com .
I ’ m a little disappointed that only one fifth of the cohort has an industry certification . The cohort surveyed in the report is working specifically in incentive travel , definitely the most technical of the four elements in the MICE acronym and , therefore , the one requiring the most by way of specialist training .
Reporting – To whom do I report ? The second peripheral element concerns reporting , ie , to whom in the corporation does the organiser of the incentive travel programme report ? I ’ m delighted by the answers to this one :
For 27 % of the cohort , Marketing is the department to whom they report , double plus change of the percentage that reports to Sales ( 13 %). This certainly squares off with the kind of results we ’ ve been seeing in other research conducted by SITE whereby soft power outcomes for incentive travel programmes ( linked more to MarCom / PR ) are increasingly eclipsing hard dollar returns ( linked exclusively to Sales ).
While this cohort of respondents is varied , 54 % of them are from Finance & Insurance , Direct Selling and Technology , so that needs to be baked into any interpretation we formulate . That said , it ’ s fair to conclude that , increasingly , the holistic impact of incentive travel in terms of hard dollar revenue and soft power culture takes it beyond the sales channel into Marketing and HR .
Perhaps this is even more evident in relation to the unusually high figure of 24 % that report directly to the CEO . When it comes to the incentive travel programme , almost a quarter of our respondents are liaising directly with the corporation ’ s head honcho , highlighting , perhaps , the supreme importance given to incentive travel by some corporate leaders ( see Leadership inSITE ’ s for more examples ). n
ISSUE 131 / CONFERENCE & MEETINGS WORLD / 13