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Corbin's
Favorite 40 Meeting Industry Web Sites There are more that 5 million sites on the Web. What are some of the best ones? As keeper of one of the meeting industry’s largest online favorites files (www.corbinball.com/favorites.htm), I am constantly on the prowl for useful sites worth bookmarking. Here are my top 40 meeting industry site favorites and my top 40 general sites as well. Selection criteria
Pet
Peeves
PlanSoft
is the most comprehensive database of meeting facilities and suppliers on the
Web. Well organized and highly searchable, this is an indispensable resource for
meeting professionals. Also contains a large variety of articles, an automated
RFP process and more. EventSource
is also a large, complete and very useful database of meeting facilities and
suppliers. It is especially strong in non-traditional venues. Also, some city
information is quite complete. This was the first site to offer online auctions
for meeting space. Competition is a good thing, and I regularly use both
PlanSoft and EventSource for site selection. AllMeetings
also provides hotel and meeting facility information in a searchable format.
Although the database is not as complete at the previous two, this site has
several helpful budgeting tools, checklists and other helpful information to
help plan meetings. AllMeetings is coming on strong, and I expect more
interesting ideas from this company. StarCite
is a rising star with much potential as an industry portal. Many innovative
meeting planning tools are provided including meeting auctions, cancelled
meeting space management, budgeting, and many checklists. Much more is scheduled
to come. The
Meeting Industry Mall was one of the first meetings industry web sites around.
It still is a great source for links to the industry. Click out the MIMList, a
free email discussion group moderated by the passionate and eloquent Joan
Eisenstodt, one of the industry’s leading educators and advocates. Also, Dawn
Penfold’s Meeting Candidate Network job board is one of the most active on the
web. The
venue information for this site is powered by the EventSource database. This
site, however, additionally has a complete, searchable event calendar, links for
travel, jobs and other information. The
American Society of Association Executives has had a significant presence on the
web for years now. This site is
especially good for association statistics, public policy information,
association news, and its searchable database of association suppliers. Need
a speaker? The National Speakers Association (NSA) site has nearly 5,000
professional speakers in a searchable database, with tips on how to hire them.
Also, SpeakersDirect (www.speakersdirect.com)
provides another complete database of speakers. You
have to hunt around this sprawling site, but there is good information to be
found at Meeting Professionals International’s (MPI) site. It has an active
public job board, many articles, statistics, and industry news. The
Professional Conference Management Association’s (PCMA) cleanly designed site
has lots of facts and figures regarding the meetings industry as well as many
tools (checklists, sample contracts, a job bank and information on meetings
technology). This
is the best site around for statistics about the economic impact of the tour and
travel industries. Many excellent tourism and government affairs links are
included. Meeting
News is my first stop for hottest news on the industry.
There is also a very helpful online version of the “Meeting Planner’s
Handbook” – a great collection of checklists and ideas. You can also ask
your burning meeting industry questions in the “Ask the Experts” with an
impressive list of industry “gurus” that respond online. I
particularly like the Adams Business Media searchable archive of their 6
magazines. Want to do research on nearly meeting industry related topic? If so,
this is a great starting point. Hotelstravel.com
claims web links to over 75,000 lodging and travel resources. Click on “hotel
chains,” for example, and get links to more than 220 hotel chain web sites. A
complete set of airline and airport links are available as well. Reserve
hotel sleeping rooms online from 30,000 hotels worldwide. This consumer travel
site provided in 6 languages has reservations, hotel information, maps, golf
course finders, and currency converters. The database is quite complete
including lodging even in small towns. However, no meeting room information is
included. 16.
www.bluedot.com BlueDot
has consistently developed creative and innovated web-based exhibition and
meeting management tools. Everything from exhibit hall kiosks/messaging systems
to full-featured exhibition and seminar management systems can be found. B-there’s
ERS (Event Registration System) is an internet-based, real-time housing,
transportation, event registration and reservation system.
It is transaction-based and offers a slick “build your own registration
form” interface. B-there is the first to integrate event registration,
housing, air and more into a web-based system. RegWeb,
a product of Cardinal Communication, offers elegant template-driven online
registration services. Passkey
provides an excellent web-based group housing service, pulling from real-time
inventory. At least 21 convention visitor bureaus have signed on and they have
been used for events in every major convention city in the country. This is a
great example on how the web can streamline and transform the way we do
business. MeetingBroker
is a new product from Newmarket International, the makers of Delphi and Breeze,
two of the leading and most widely used hotel and CVB sales management programs
around. MeetingBroker collects RFPs
from a variety of RFP sites (StarCite, Hot Dates, and others), translates them,
and deposits these leads directly into the existing sales management programs
that the hotels are already using. This is another great example of how the web
can streamline a previously paper-based means of doing business. Event411
bills itself as being the “Official Online Event-Planning Provider of the
Democratic National Convention 2000.” This ASP (application service provider)
provides a place for planners to communicate to attendees, control a master
agenda, track RSVPs, keep a step-by-step "to do list," and more with
password-protected access. Planners can build their own event home page, have
the ability to track event-related expenses, create a personal schedule for the
entire event, and can use the site for payment processing, desktop printing,
video streaming, travel, and other tools. This
cleanly designed directory and association site for the International
Association of Conference Centers lists nearly 300 IACC approved conference
centers around the world. This
creative consortium of 21 New England CVBs (convention and visitors bureaus) is
an excellent model of regional web-based promotion that I would love to see on a
larger scale. I especially like the StarDates section where hotels posts short
term space availability. One
of the most complete CVB sites around. Underneath is flashy cover, lies lots of
information for meeting planners and many ideas for other cities. GES
pioneered using the web for exhibition services. Their online Exhibitor Kit has
been available for more than three years. They have since developed a wide range
of tools including online floor plans, virtual exhibits, and details about
nearly every type of decorator, drayage, and other exhibition services you can
think of. This
site is another database of meeting facilities. The strength here, however, is
their email newsletter, MADNews, that is available free from this site.
If you are looking for last minute specials on distressed space, check it
out and sign up for their newsletter. The
Turnberry Isle Resort is an excellent example of what hotels should include on a
site for meeting planners. If you follow the “meetings” link, you find a
complete meeting planners kit, including menus, AV info, floor plans, billing
procedures, and more. Everything that a hotel would normally mail out in their
meeting planner’s kit at significant expense is included here. This
is the perfect meeting industry “mass customization” site.
If you follow the P.E.R.K (Personalized Electronic Response Kit) link,
and fill out the profile form, you will be sent a specialized password that
provides an individually customized site for you, greeting you by the your name
and the name of your company on numerous pages. This site also has 360-degree
views of public space, multi-lingual streaming video, and a great way of
handling floor plans. A
ton of hospitality links from the University of Nevada Las Vegas Hotel, Tourism
and Hospitality Management School. This
content-rich and fresh site from 3M has many meeting management tools and ideas
for conducting effective meetings and presentations. This
is the place to go to sign up for Doug Fox’s free e-zine, distributed twice
weekly, focusing on meetings and tradeshow marketing, web sites and technology.
The site contains this year’s archive of his issues. Doug’s newsletter is a
must for those interested in theses subjects. Event
security should be a concern to all meeting professionals. This site contains
articles and a sign-up for a free, weekly newsletter that keeps you posted to
the security hot spots around the world and related issues. PlanNet,
a full-service site selection and meeting planning firm, provides a site with
more than a thousand links to hotels and other industry suppliers under the
“resources” section. This site
is a great example of how one can use good content to drive customers to a
commercial site. Virtual
meetings and web-based meetings offer new ways of meeting and communication.
Show a group PowerPoint slides or other documents over the web. This site
includes a rich tool set included polling, program sharing, and interactive
whiteboards. WebEx is a major player in this field and offers one of the best
sites. Up to 5 people can meet for free. Larger groups are at cost. A
large, cataloged and searchable collection of meeting industry links is found
here. There is a handy “Add an URL” section to include your firm. This
is one of the first “hot dates” sites. Search by city, region, property, or
hotel chain for bargains and special deals on group hotel rooms. The web is a
perfect medium for yield management and this is an example of one way to do
this. This
site employs streaming video and audio technology to take “virtual” video
tours of more than 100 properties around the world. This
site is a start up, but look for big things here. Banking on the great potential
for establishing community after an event (and to bring attendee back in future
years), Aftermeeting will provide a wide range of services to help the event
planner including surveys, course notes postings, links to speakers and
exhibitors, discussion areas, and more.
This
site allows you to create a customized online invitation to an event or party,
sell tickets, track RSVPs, manage membership dues, and more. Please
forgive me for putting in a quick plug for my site. It has the most extensive
listing of meetings technology sites on the web, free meeting planning software
tools, dozens of articles on meeting planning and meetings technology and more.
If you find this article helpful, please let me know by signing the Guest Book in the Contact Corbin Section.. |
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