Our research has involved analysing questionnaires from more than 1,100 meetings industry professionals worldwide – including venues, meeting planners and suppliers – and backing this up with in-depth interviews with another 70+ contacts from around the world. We are almost at the end of the data gathering phase and are now able to launch some of the headline findings in advance of producing the main study report in April.
One of the main things that we’ve found is that around 9 out of 10 meeting industry businesses are now actively engaging with CSR, with 1 in 4 saying they are very active. Reasons for doing this vary but in the main people are NOT driven by the profit motive – few people believe that being active in CSR improves overall bottom line performance. But many of our sources have told us that having a formal CSR policy is important in getting them onto tender lists and approved supplier lists. Indeed, more than 30% of respondents said that they already give preference to suppliers who have a demonstrative commitment to CSR. As well as developing business performance with suppliers, having a CSR policy also demonstrates credibility and trustworthiness to clients and, to some extent, still provides some market differentiation. However, external pressures are such that it is likely that engagement with CSR will grow across the sector in the next 5 to 10 years with more and more people following the current industry leaders. This in turn is likely to be the ‘tipping point’ needed for the more committed organisations to convert their current approach to engagement, which tends not to be recognised with external accreditation, into something that is recognised by one of the several accreditation initiatives. We certainly expect the launch of ISO 20121 later this year to focus people’s attention on the benefits of accreditation and there are some in the sector who feel that unless the industry as a whole engages more with voluntary standards, then there may be the risk of enforced regulation, particularly regarding environmental and social policies.
One final point that is of particular interest to the team, working as we do in Higher Education, is the emerging belief across the meetings industry that without a formal and coherent approach to CSR, employers may find it increasingly difficult to hire the best candidates. This generation, more than any other, is increasingly committed to finding employers whose ethics and world view reflect their own. Quite simply, if they don’t like the way you treat the environment and the community around you, they are unlikely to want to work with you either.
