Meeting Planner Insights
The Critical Role of the Shortlist
The shortlist is the initial, crucial hurdle for any destination aiming to host a major event. It's the select group of top contenders identified by meeting planners. If your city isn't on this list, your chances of being chosen are slim.
When asked, "Which cities on this list best meet your criteria for hosting your largest meetings over the next 1 to 6 years?", meeting planners typically narrow their options. Over 90% of planners list seven or fewer cities, making competition fierce. For your target markets, the number of planners who include your destination on their shortlist is the most accurate measure of your sales and marketing effectiveness.
How Your Destination is Perceived:
The Six Factors Driving Shortlist Selection
The Evidénz model, built on over 30 years of destination selection data, can account for over 90% of whether a destination is included in a Meeting Planner's (MP) shortlist. This model evaluates destinations across six critical factors, revealing how your location stacks up against competitors.
Factor 1: Rational Evaluation Factors
Destinations are assessed based on 15 rational valuation factors. These include crucial logistical and functional criteria such as:
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Venue capacity and quality
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Airlift and hotel room availability
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Local transportation infrastructure
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Cost and budget considerations
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Incentives offered
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Safety and security
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Flexibility for custom setups
These factors often determine a destination's initial viability.
Factor 2: Emotional Evaluation Factors
Beyond logistics, destinations are also evaluated on 10 emotional evaluation factors, which significantly influence overall appeal:
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Destination appeal and "buzz factor"
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Cultural uniqueness
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Dining and nightlife options
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Brand alignment
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Perceived prestige
These elements can generate excitement among attendees, sponsors, and organizers, often tipping the scales when rational factors are otherwise equal.
Factor 3: Economic, Political, and Social Environment
Our data demonstrates that current events profoundly impact the relative importance of rational versus emotional factors in an MP's decision. For instance, decisions lean more towards emotional factors during economic booms and shift towards rational factors during economic downturns.
Factor 4: Pitch and Proposal Effectiveness
The quality and quantity of pitches and proposals from a Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB), Destination Marketing Organization (DMO), or Convention Center (CC) are key drivers for shortlist inclusion. The Evidénz Report reveals whether the pitches MPs received from your destination over the past year made them more, less, or equally likely to seriously consider your destination for a large meeting or convention.
Factor 5: Ease of Doing Business
Based on MPs' firsthand experiences, input from colleagues, and past interactions, there are clear differences between destinations that are easy to work with and those that are more challenging. Our data confirms that this ease of doing business can significantly influence whether a destination makes an MP's shortlist.
Factor 6: Key Contact Quality
As in any sales environment, people prefer to do business with those they like and trust. How MPs perceive the quality of key destination contacts (typically CVB/DMO/CC sales representatives) is often the deciding factor in destination selection when all other evaluation factors are equal.