Understanding planners' use of meeting facility information

For convention centers and hotel meeting facilities to be successful in attracting meetings of businesses during the 1990s, they will need to understand how meeting planners make decisions. To better understand meeting planners' decision-making processes, this study used survey research to investigate how meeting planners use both internal and external sources of information as well as what their preferences are for receiving information about meeting facilities. Results indicated that personal sources of information, such as prior experience or the advice of others, dominate the decision-making process. Furthermore, planners prefer personalized marketing information to less personalized forms of communication. Given these inclinations, facility marketers must develop campaigns to generate positive word-of-mouth messages about their facilities in order to compete successfully.