How to Build a Business Conference

The meeting and conference industry in the United States is a $175 billion a year enterprise, according to travel researcher PhoCusWright. The role of meeting planner has become a popular profession. Estimates are that there are approximately 50,000 to 75,000 meeting and conference planners in the United States. The fundamental and advanced disciplines of meeting planning are taught by organizations such as Meeting Professionals International (MPI) and the Convention Industry Council (CIC).

Instructions

1

Decide whether the event is being staged for profit or as a private, proprietary function for your business or organization. For example, trade associations and private, conference-production companies typically organize events for profit. Individual companies and government entities do them as private events and pay for the attendees' travel costs.

2

Create a detailed business plan for conferences aimed at making money. Negotiate written contracts with all vendors, such as a hotel, bus company or restaurant, and include total costs. Basic revenue streams are the registration fees people pay to attend the conference and the difference between the contracted price you pay for each hotel room and the price attendees pay you. To establish an operating budget, project the number of attendees and multiply that by the planned registration fee. Add in the projected profit from the sale of hotel rooms to attendees. The combined number is your total projected revenue. Subtract planned costs and the remainder is your projected net profit from the event. If the event is not for profit, the total costs represent your budget for the event.

3

Select a destination. The lure of the destination is one of the most important factors in the success of any conference. Ideally, the destination should be relevant to the topic of the event. For example, a "Wall Street Crisis" conference should be held in Lower Manhattan or Washington, DC. A "Future of Hollywood" conference should be staged in Los Angeles. Generic conferences such as insurance or sales-related events can be held anywhere.

4

Select a headquarters hotel. Although attendees can stay elsewhere, the headquarters hotel will be the center of the conference. Meeting sessions will be here during the day, and it will also be the site for social events in the evening. To secure a contract, you will guarantee a total number of room nights. That number is calculated by multiplying the total number of attendees by the number of nights during the conference. For example, a three-day, two-night conference for 100 attendees represents 200 room nights. Your contract will include what is called an attrition clause. That means that if fewer than the guaranteed 200 room nights are occupied, you will pay a penalty. The lower the total number of room nights, the steeper the penalty.

5

Negotiate meeting and event space at a reduced cost --- or for free. For a conference involving several hundred room nights or more, most major-brand hotels will give away the meeting space in return for a guarantee of a minimum amount of food-and-beverage business, including snacks and refreshments on the breaks during the day. Most hotels use a free-meeting-space to total-room-night ratio, so the more room nights you generate, the better the deal you can get.

6

Hire a high-profile keynote speaker. Depending on your industry or organizational affiliation, Bill Clinton or Bill O'Reilly can be a huge draw. Many conferences feature superstar speakers, but pay a lot for them. A one-hour speech from top celebrity speakers can cost $50,000 to $150,000 and more. Lesser-known speaker-circuit pros who deliver canned keynote speeches for conferences charge between $10,000 and $20,000, but few of them will draw many registrations to the event.

7

Recruit a high-profile panel of experts. Bring in CEOs or CFOs from top companies in your industry or the best minds in your field. At a typical conference, the panel discussions are more of a draw than a keynote speaker for the closing-night banquet. In general, people attend conferences to learn -- and they do it in the panel discussions. For that reason, the more A-list your panel, the higher the registration fee you can charge to attend.