Industry lacks data and policy
The German events industry has no clear benchmarks, lacks data and has no knowledge of its costs, Gerhard Bleile, president of the German Association of Events Organisers, said.
Speaking at a session on event planning at the Business Travel Days at ITB Berlin, Mr Bleile said the events market was "completely different from other markets."
While in business travel, there was a limited number of vendors, like airlines, hotels and rail. In events there could be 30 vendors including caterers and coach companies.
"An events policy has not been needed up to now. But travel managers are coming into the area and we are also now getting professionals from procurement and supply chain managers," he said.
Mr Bleile said the German events market was worth €70bn a year compared with €40bn for business travel. The industry held 1.93m events in 2008 compared to 1.4m in 2004.
There is a 10% year on year growth and last year about 94m people attended events in Germany.
"This is a very attractive piece of a company and everybody wants a share in this. That is why events are so pertinent to people in a company," he said.
But the companies often lack any sort of systematic planning of their events programme. "We do not have a clear mission statement and therefore there is no way to measure success.
"There has been a gung-ho approach by participants with no planning. They just go out and do it. But we now have to discuss benchmarks.
"The event focus is moving towards what savings can be made. It all boils down to the various stakeholders in the company."
Mr Bleile said events needed to be planned with all stakeholders and decision makers involved from the early stages.
There was a classic, four-stage approach: planning, preparations, realisation and follow-up.
Each cost centres should be allocated, RFPs sent out and contracts signed, he said. All data and spending should be captured and reported.
"Procurement should be involved and every decision should be handled by an IT tools so you can track back the spending," Mr Bleile said.
A check list of things to do which could run to 300 items was also essential.
He said if planned properly, better process could amount to 40% of the savings while economies of scale could account for 20%. Altogether there could be savings of 20% on previous events of a similar size and nature when the four stages were followed.
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