Lehigh Valley Hotels need to add Green meetings with outside team building packages

Lehigh Valley Hotels should cater their meeting packages around green events and unique team building events to compensate for new competition. As more and more hotels pop up with little or no meeting space, the full-service big boys should be looking to green meetings to fill the lost transient business. Green meetings will seperate them from the competition and allow the event planner to get some green points with their company. Benchmark Hospitality just released their Top Ten Meeting Trends - Green meetings and outside team building are high on the list.


#1 - Green Meetings. Demand continues at an even higher level than last year. More and more RFPs are inquiring about the conference centers' green policies as a selection criterion.
#2 - Keeping up with technology. Wireless connectivity is now an expectation, advanced technology such as 360-degree cameras are being installed in conference rooms to enable meetings to patch in persons from around the globe, and at a moment's notice. The challenge is to stay ahead of the curve when it's difficult just to keep up.
#3 - Laptops now encouraged in the meeting room for note-taking or facilitator-directed research, not e-mail. It's also a nod to going green, as typing notes into a laptop uses zero paper and eliminates waste.
#4 - Paperless negotiation. More than 80 percent of RFPs, proposals and contracts are now delivered and returned online, saving great amounts of paper but increasing the pressure to respond in real time.
#5 - Healthy break snacks. Choice, variety and selection are all still important, but the requests to make sure it's healthy have come back strong, and low carb is not the only criterion. At least healthy today is synonymous with flavorful, low fat and low cal.
#6 - Teambuilding activities in high demand. From the traditional to culinary cook offs to white-water rafting, teambuilding activities as part of a meeting are more popular than ever, often driven by the destination and with a preference for outdoor, physical activities.
#7 - All-inclusive package pricing still preferred. There are fewer meetings with a greater number of attendees per meeting, for enhanced cost efficiencies, but package pricing remains solid.
#8 - Critical to stay current on industry segments delivering business to your property. Change happens faster all the time, with company mergers, products becoming obsolete as technology delivers the next generation, global competition bringing rapid paradigm shifts, and social networking systems revolutionizing how information flows from person to person, group to group.
#9 - Destination recreation activities increasingly important. More than golf and spa sessions, attendees are looking to experience all that a destination has to offer, including walking and biking through natural forests, touring historic sites, climbing mountains and mesas, descending into canyons and even shopping.
# 10 - Interactive event Web sites. Set up by group leaders for a particular meeting for attendees to reference before the meeting begins, and throughout a conference as a review of the material discussed during the day. The sites also enable feedback and continued group interaction after hours by contributing to a dialog or meeting blog.
Bonus Trend #1 - Latin America is increasingly attractive. With geographic proximity, growing business climates throughout the region, a ratcheting up in demand for corporate meetings and the movement toward recognizing all the Americas as one, Latin America is not just for incentive groups anymore.
Bonus Trend #2 - So is Japan. Interest in conference centers in Japan is growing faster than in many other established regions in the world. Corporate Japan is actively embracing the meetings concept that Europe and America adopted over a quarter century ago. Proposals for new purpose-built conference centers in Japan are surfacing every day and the country is projected to lead the concept as it migrates throughout Asia.
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