A few weeks ago I wrote about how I had "fallen off the saddle" and missed several weeks' worth of posts to this blog. One of the reasons mentioned is how Greenfield is about to undertake the single biggest project of our 15-year history: the data gathering component of the MPI Foundation Canadian Economic Impact Study (CEIS) of the Meetings Industry!Ever since we announced the project had been awarded to the research consortium headed by Maritz Canada, along with the Conference Board of Canada, the Canadian Human Resources Tourism Council and Greenfield, we've been working behind the scenes to help with the research project design, including the formulation of survey questions for meeting planners, meeting venues (hotels, resorts, convention centres, conference centres, etc.).
We have been in touch with the project sponsors, along with other meetings industry organizations under the Business Events Industry Coalition of Canada.
Social media efforts to publicize the project have begun. Watch for periodic updates in the various LinkedIn Meeting & Event Groups, and tweets with #MPICEIS.
And we are this close to deploying the survey to some 30,000 meeting planners (based here in Canada and abroad), and almost 2,000 meeting and event venues!
As the data collection partner, the Greenfield Services Team is really excited because this landmark research will articulate the meetings industry's value to governments, investors and other stakeholders, and help advocate for a favourable business environment.
With a significant number of respondents, the study also will enable the assessment of the relative market share of key markets versus the overall number of meetings in Canada -- for instance what percentage of meetings that took place in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary or Ottawa.
Eventually it is our hope that this research will power an online tool that will allow planners, tourism bureaus and venues to evaluate the economic impact of a particular meeting in their destination.
If you are a Canadian meeting and event professional, or an international planner who brought a meeting or business event to Canada in 2012, we hope you will respond to the study and help us spread the word to colleagues!
