“At the end of the day, MPI is really about advancing this industry,” Paul Van Deventer, MPI president and CEO, said during yesterday’s press conference at IMEX America. “It’s about the professional development of those who work in the industry and promoting the value that face-to-face business events deliver for everyone in society.”

He went on to discuss key goals recently developed for the next five years, leading up to 2027.

“What we’re learning coming out of COVID and especially with the dynamics of our workforce changing so dramatically with new generations is that the concept of membership in an association now looks very different,” he said. “We want to focus on the concept of an engaged community. People want to interact with each other, do business with each other and be involved. Membership may very well be an outcome of that engagement with the community, but there are many other ways to be involved with each other—whether it’s participating in one of our conferences, in a chapter or joining one of our online communities.

“Pre-COVID, we had about a 60,000-person community, which we measure as someone who has engaged with us during the year. Coming out of COVID, it’s about 80,000 strong, and our goal is to triple that over the next five years—to have a community of 250,000 engaged individuals.”

Another big focus for MPI is customers, or those who do business with MPI at the monetary level, Van Deventer said.

“We want to have 40,000 of those individuals,” he said. “Today we’re standing at about 15,000. We believe this is a very attainable objective that supports our vision and mission.”

He went on to discuss MPI’s revenue, and the fact that 92 percent of it comes from North America.

“We have a diverse community of members, and that community overall is very diverse in its geographic locations, but revenues are still very dependent on North America,” he said. “We want to double the revenue coming from outside North America to 20 percent, which is very ambitious growth for us.”

Van Deventer said strategic partnerships have been a very important focus for MPI over the past four or five years, noting that the organization is currently closely aligned with about a half a dozen partners but plans to grow that number over the next five years.

He also pointed out MPI’s commitment to fighting human trafficking.  

“About five years ago we made awareness of the horrors of human trafficking a core focus of everything we do,” Van Deventer said. “Everything we’re doing in our education, our events, our chapters, we make sure that human trafficking is at the forefront of those discussions. All of our contracts have clauses about ensuring our partners are fighting human trafficking. Our focus has been mostly on child trafficking because that occurs predominantly throughout the hospitality industry. There’s one organization worldwide that is the pinnacle organization fighting child human trafficking: The Code. We were selected as one of only three organizations around the world last year by The Code due to our efforts. This is core to our staff now and its core to our whole community. We’re proud for that recognition but also know that we have a lot more to do.”

"Membership may very well be an outcome of that engagement with the community, but there are many other ways to be involved with each other—whether it’s participating in one of our conferences, in a chapter or joining one of our online communities."

In terms of membership, he noted a new regionally focused model based on the composition of specific economies, pointing out that MPI’s global pricing has always been based on the U.S. dollar.

“Whatever membership was in the U.S. would translate to a local economy and the individual would be expected to pay that,” Van Deventer said. “But a US$100 fee in the U.S. looks very different in Africa or in areas of Asia and South America. This new model is really driving massive growth for us now in developing areas, and particularly throughout Latin America. The Latin American marketplace over the past two years has been by far our fastest-growing marketplace.”

He also expressed his excitement for the 2023 volunteer leaders of MPI: Cleo Battle, president of CEO of visit Louisville Tourism, incoming chair of MPI’s International Board of Directors, and Jennifer Beatty, director of business development for Tourism Calgary, incoming chair of MPI’s Global Board of Trustees (which oversees the MPI Foundation). Another important name in 2023: Kitty Ratcliffe, president of Explore St. Louis, who will be honored with the Industry Leader Award at next year’s President’s Dinner during the World Education Congress (WEC).

“Over the last nine years we’ve been recognizing a very prominent, impactful industry leader [each year] who has been meaningful not just for our industry but for MPI,” Van Deventer said. “Kitty Ratcliffe is a former chair of the board, a former chapter president, the head of our host committee a number of times and is just a really great partner of MPI and our industry.”

Finally, he offered an update on Meetings Outlook, MPI’s quarterly research report.

“A panel of [meeting professionals] who we survey every quarter provides us with some incredibly rich data,” Van Deventer said. “What we’re seeing in the current study about to be released is consistent, I think, with a lot of what you’re hearing around this show. We’re seeing a return of optimism in our business and a return in bookings and forward-looking revenues. We’re also seeing a substantial increase in costs—not just with what we’re seeing with inflation around the world but maybe ahead of inflation when it comes to transportation and food and beverage costs. We’re also seeing the biggest challenge being workforce development. We’re actually seeing the backlog starting to fill, but there’s a massive training gap from that shortage that’s going to take us years to work through, and that has an unfortunate effect on service levels.

Drew Holmgreen, chief brand officer for MPI, was the next to speak, and said Smart Monday, which preceded IMEX America on Oct. 10, had 815 total attendees—nearly 200 more than last year. MPI’s daily keynotes at IMEX America were also popular, with more than 400 attendees on Monday, 200 on Tuesday and 150 on Wednesday. MPI booth activities included 13 education sessions.

He said MPI’s 50th anniversary celebration began at IMEX America 2021 and is concluding this week at IMEX America 2022 (there was a booth celebration on Wednesday with cupcakes, beer and wine).

Holmgreen said another booth activation is creating time capsules.

“We’ve been recording videos through a partnership with Gather Voices over the course of the past year, with people telling us their experience and what they’ve gotten from MPI,” he said. “We’re actually going to record time capsules and talk to MPI in 2072 to see what people think is going to happen within this industry over the course of the next 50 years.”

Finally, Holmgreen discussed upcoming MPI events, starting with the European Meetings & Events Conference (EMEC) in Brighton, U.K. (the home of IMEX Group) in March, followed by WEC in the Mexican Caribbean in June.

“We are now on our third WEC since the pandemic hit and we have constantly seen numbers go up year after year, so we’re very excited about what we’re going to experience in the Mexican Caribbean,” he said. “It brings a whole litany of new opportunities for us to plan an extraordinary event really blending business and leisure in a way that’s never been done before.”

Future WEC locations include Louisville in 2024, St. Louis in 2025 and San Antonio in 2026. Holmgreen said an RFP for 2027 and 2028 will go out before the end of this year.

Annette Gregg, CMM, MBA, MPI’s chief revenue officer, then took the microphone to discuss MPI’s strategic alliance strategy. She said MPI has made a concerted effort to approach sister associations about codifying relationships in the spirit of extending marketing reach, extending/sharing educational assets and extending any partnership through membership collaboration. She touted agreements with IACC, Destinations International, IAEE, the National Coalition of Black Meeting Professionals and HSMAI, noting how such agreements “help make sure that we are creating assets that speak to the next generation of event professionals and help raise the level of the whole MICE industry.”

"We’re really trying to help elevate meeting professionals how we know best, through our education.”

There’s also a new agreement with the Sports Events and Tourism Association, and MPI is looking at ways to expand relationships with Questex and Connect, “global media companies that have very effective trade shows and conferences.”

Gregg then discussed the MPI Academy and an exciting new agreement with SAACI (the South African Association for the Conference Industry).

“We have inked a new agreement and they’re going to be a distribution partner for us for our meeting planning basics curriculum,” she said. “So, we’re really trying to help elevate meeting professionals how we know best, through our education.”

Gregg also discussed two recently launched educational initiatives specifically for college and emerging professionals.

“Through MPI Certified, we will come on to a college curriculum and give advice to the program director,” she said. “We know from our research what emerging meeting professionals need to be successful. And a lot of college curriculums are coming at it from historical knowledge and maybe just need a little bit of research-based or real-world knowledge that we can provide from our membership. The MPI Certified program is designed specifically to help those college curriculums become future focused. We have about 30 or 40 universities that are excited for us to take a look at their curriculums and give them that MPI Certified check.”

Gregg also discussed the Emerging Meeting Professionals certificate program, geared for those with one to three years of industry experience.

“It’s going to give them some opportunities to do some real hands-on project work and just some baseline knowledge, so they come out ready to start work,” she said.

Finally, Gregg discussed the Community Content Platform.

“Think user-generated content or TikTok for the meeting and event industry,” she said. “We’re trying to unleash our 13,000 members and our community of 80,000 to really unlock their knowledge base. There’s so much knowledge at this trade show. There’s a whole lot of people that have a whole lot of knowledge [in this industry]. So how can we give them a platform to record a short video, a snippet of education? We’re calling that our Community Content Platform. We launched that just last month and right now we’re getting a whole lot of content uploaded. So next time we’re all together, I hope to say that we have hundreds and hundreds or maybe thousands and thousands of videos ready to share with our global community.”

“Since April 2020, we distributed $1.7 million to our community."

Gary Schirmacher, chair of the MPI Global Board of Trustees, was the last to speak at the press conference. He discussed the MPI Foundation’s decision to financially assist the community with memberships and scholarships during the pandemic.

“Since April 2020, we distributed $1.7 million to our community, and it’s amazing the notes that we see from people saying without that year of membership they might not have been able to continue their education with the MPI Academy, with events that we did through MPI that really helped them to sustain throughout this tough pandemic time,” he said. “We helped 3,200 individuals across the globe. We also touched every single MPI chapter. There was not one chapter in our community that did not get assistance. And then we also supported three major grants for the industry itself. Those were important studies and the kinds of things that people really took something away from in learning how to plan post pandemic.”

Schirmacher also discussed how the MPI Foundation helped Ukrainian students.

“Many of you who were at WEC heard what we did during Global Meetings Industry Day (GMID),” he said. “The Foundation matched funds that we raised during GMID to assist 25 Ukrainian students that were in their final year of schooling and weren’t going to be able to complete their hospitality degrees. So, with the help Krzysztof Celuch, who is on our Global Board of Trustees, we were able to help those 25 individuals get their degrees and participate in the industry, whereas they wouldn’t have been able to otherwise.”

Finally, Schirmacher discussed the MPI Foundation’s significant initiatives to raise industry funds at IMEX America: the silent auction (which concludes at 12 p.m. PST on Oct. 13) and Rendezvous at IMEX America sponsored by Caesars Entertainment.