Michael Doyle's Blog – March 2009 Archive (4)

Virtual events are a means to attract and bind customers, improve customer satisfaction and customer loyalty and to achieve similar results with employees and partners. The reality is that with virtual events and meetings you can do this while decreasing travel costs—which can be about 50% of the cost of any meeting. According to the US Travel Association of the $175 billion spent on meetings in the US, 54% is travel and lodging related and my guess would be that it is about the same percent of… Continue

With a physical event, people travel to the same location and therefore the same time zone to have their meeting but with virtual events, you can have people attending the meeting while located in every time zone in the world. That makes it pretty hard to schedule a convenient time for everyone. Until recently, this problem was largely relegated to virtual event producers, but now, with physical events becoming more regional every day the problem cuts across all types of events and… Continue

There is not a day that goes by now that I don’t get a call or email from a company that is scrambling to establish their presence in the virtual event and meeting space. From major event management companies that are forming alliances and building out programs and practices (watch George P Johnson, Immersa Marketing and Maritz to name just a few), to staffing firms and headhunters scouring the landscape for corporate clients as well as the virtual events service providers.



Over the… Continue

CNBC's Julia Boorstin reports in her story Virtual Meetings Get A 2nd Life that companies are moving to virtual events and meetings to save money and because it looks better than sending people off to places like "Pebble Beach golf outings."



In talking to executives from virtual and physical event and meeting companies they all agree, the pendulum has swung tremendously toward virtual events. As Julia points out "hundreds of companies… Continue