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Prime Site CONFERENCE: New Awards for Small-to-Mid-size Meeting Venues

A new category was added to the Meeting & Event Venue Oscars in 2009. After years of growth in the Small-to-Mid-size facility segment of the industry, The Facilities Media Group (publishers of Facilitiesonline) has created a special award for Conference Centers as part of the company’s Awards of Excellence, an industry-wide recognition of quality venues.

Since 1993, when the Facilities Media Group (FMG) first initiated the Awards of Excellence program, the awards have become a much anticipated annual event. Voted on by industry members—mainly meeting & event planners—through ballots available online and in FMG publications, including Facilities & Destinations SuperBook, F&D Planner Guide and Facilities, the awards include: Facilities Prime Site (for entertainment and live-event facilities); Facilities & Destinations Prime Site (for convention centers and large meeting venues), Top Destination (for Convention & Visitor Bureaus) and the Hotels on the Elite List Award (for large meeting hotels and resorts).

As of 2009, add to those esteemed categories Conference Prime Site. The inaugural class of 25 award winners was announced in the 2009 edition of Facilities & Destinations CONFERENCE, which was mailed to more than 30,000 Meeting & Event Planners in the Fall. Facilities & Destinations CONFERENCE is the FMG publication devoted to Conference Centers and other small-to-mid-size meeting venues.

The awards and new voting process were first announced in the 2008 issue, although according to Michael Caffin, Associate Publisher, FMG, planning for Prime Site Conference Award actually began with the launch of the first FMG Conference publication in 2006. “Small-to-mid-size conference centers were always on the radar,” said Caffin. “When our first issue was so well received, we saw a niche that needed to be filled in the industry, and since we’ve fine-tuned our awards system for more than a decade, creating a Conference Award Program was a natural.”

“Small-to-mid-size conference centers were always on the radar,” said Michael Caffin, Associate Publisher, FMG. “When our first issue was so well received, we saw a niche that needed to be filled in the industry, and since we’ve fine-tuned our awards system for more than a decade, creating a Conference Award Program was a natural.”

Conference Centers, of course, had long been visible pieces of the meetings landscape, but in the 21st century, demand for these venues jumped. “Training and other sorts of corporate meetings were growing while at the same time, most associations were increasing their activities, especially at the local, state and regional levels,” Caffin pointed out. “Most associations have several committees and those committee members hold smaller meetings through out the year, in addition to whatever large conventions the association must hold. And, within the context of a large meeting, like a convention, various entities hold off-site events, from specific training to large parties and receptions, so Conference Centers in a city started to see more business as a result of convention center booking. Our readers, many of whom had only booked larger meeting venues, began looking for new and unique smaller venues for their ancillary meetings, and we created a resource for them with our publication.”

As demand increased, the supply of small-to-mid-size venues also seemed to rapidly multiply. “The large industry conventions and trade shows, which used to be solely for CVBs and Convention Centers, soon had booths of smaller venues,” said Caffin. “The Exhibition Floors diversified so to speak. Small-to-mid-size venues became more competitive with the some larger venues. At the same time, more large meeting venues and a good many convention centers expanded the types of meetings and events they could accommodate. Many convention centers and large meeting hotels have created special packages for smaller meetings—creating a conference center within a larger facility so to speak.”

One of the challenges for the new publication was how to define “Conference Center,” and after meetings with the editorial staff as well as industry consultants, Caffin said, “we let the readers define it. That is what is especially fun. The range of the smaller meeting venues, from hotels to university facilities, even resorts and spas and an Aquarium. It’s an exciting time in this segment of the meetings industry.”

Caffin admits that announcing awards during in a slow economy caused some consternation, but the company decided to move forward as planned. “The economic downturn affected meetings across the board so smaller events certainly felt a negative impact. “By the same token, we’ve heard a lot of anecdotal reports about how venues stepped up the plate, and really partnered with meeting planners to save an event, or bring it in on what turned out to be, shall we say, a more cost-effective budget than originally planned for. I think a lot of those venues received our inaugural awards. Historically, the Prime Site awards are more of a result of staff than the attributes of a physical building or

The inaugural slate of winners of the first Prime Site CONFERENCE awards numbered 25.

destination.”

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