SITE
‘Nobody told me there’d be days like these’
BY SITE GLOBAL CEO DIDIER SCAILLET
took the reins as CEO of
SITE at the beginning of
2019 and, as you do when
you start a new job, I
expected the usual roller coaster ride
with upswings and downswings. But, to
quote John Lennon, “Nobody told me
there’d be days like these”.
Following two full years of upswings
at SITE, during which we reached
historically high membership numbers
and retention percentages, our entire
industry is now in a downward tailspin
with little knowledge or understanding,
at time of writing, of what awaits us
when this all stops.
At this stage we have a diagnosis, but
not a prognosis. We know what has
happened, we even know why it
happened, but we don’t know when it’s
going to end and what to expect if and
when it does.
Nobody told me there’d be days like
these!
So what are we doing at SITE during
these “strange days, indeed”?
Our first action has been to focus
attention on our members. SITE exists
because of our members, so these are the
people from whom we must take our
marching orders and for whom we must
deliver value.
Back in March, it quickly became very
clear that some members of SITE were
losing their jobs, or being furloughed,
and risked having to leave SITE as their
membership dues were usually paid for
by their employer.
To mitigate this, we created a
compassionate fund in SITE, The Moira
Fund, named for Moira Hearn, a much
loved, deceased member. To date many
members in difficulty have availed of the
fund to keep up their SITE membership
and remain as active participants in our
community.
In an early member survey we learned
that our members wanted to hear from
us more often – so we doubled the
frequency of our newsletter – and
wanted access to expert opinion on
burning issues such as contract law – so
we commenced a regular webinar
programme.
We were also told that members
wanted access to our educational
products – so we made access to our
learning and development platform
Right: Didier
Scaillet, global
CEO of SITE
We know
what has
happened,
we even
know why
it happened
but we don’t
know when it’s
going to end
and what to
expect if and
when it does.”
free of charge.
We quickly understood, too, that our
chapter network around the world was
doing a great job with their own
webinar programme so we promoted
that to our global membership.
Open rates, click rates and
registrations on our digital assets have
doubled since the advent of coronavirus
and, despite many being laid off or
furloughed, membership retention is at a
solid 72%.
Our focus on members will culminate
with SITE Week, a week-long series of
events – some in-person, some hybrid
– during which we’ll stage a Town Hall
and use hackathon techniques to hash
out our road to recovery.
The creation of the Manifesto series
(see previous CMW coverage of The
Bangkok Manifesto and The Vancouver
Manifesto) taught us about the wisdom of
crowds – we’re very excited by the
prospect of channelling the ideas of our
global membership into a robust road to
recovery.
Nobody told me there’d be days like
these but I wouldn’t have it any other
way. I’m privileged to lead an association
that’s forward-facing and finding new
ways to build value around the
transformative power of incentive travel
experiences.
ISSUE 107 / CONFERENCE & MEETINGS WORLD / 23