“Instead of booking partitioned hotel meeting rooms known for their blandness, companies are turning to chic boutique hotels like the Setai in South Beach, Florida, where the setting for a two-day gathering may be a lounge, library, rooftop or pool, and the bill is best often seen through dark glasses.”
Designed for groups of 50 or less, according to writer Paul Burnham Finney in the New YorkTimes Itineraries section, April 8, the boutique venues are providing a ‘new cool’ in meeting environments.
Author Finney provides a quick but anecdotally flavored view of this
changing scene, of particular interest to the 60 million GenX- crowd.
According to Bjorn Hanson, a hotel expert at Pricewaterhouse Coopers, the GenXs… ”have changed the whole meeting demographic. Meetings today aren’t arranged to please aging boomers who like etchings of hunting scenes on hotels walls. The GenXs like an aura of casualness. And if a corporate meeting doesn’t look interesting—and they have a choice—they’ll bow out.
But back to the Setai
Unlike the party atmosphere in other South Beach hotels, according to Setai Sales Director Jorge Collazo, they provide informality and a sense of privacy. The Setai hosts some 36 small meetings of fewer than 30 participants each year in its Indonesian-style oceanfront setting.
See www.newyorktimes.com for more detail. It’s free, but registration is generally required.
Melissa Bradley’s On My Mind message in the Sept-Oct issue of Indagare—family focused travel--just happened to be what was on my mind as I reviewed some of the most recent surveys on consumer travel behavior in a struggling economy.
In the November 3rd issue, covering the Latest Quarterly Survey from American Express Publishing/Harrison Group on Affluence and Wealth in America, is a most informative visit to spending in a troubled economy.
One thing that struck us, as we listened to the October 2 presentation, was how the term affluent covered so much territory - There is “ Bedrocks” Affluent, “Upper Middle Class” Affluent, “Pinnacle” Affluent, “Super” Affluent and finally, just plain Wealthy – all together, some 20 million households.
Nat Ives, in Ad Age Online Sept 6, cites new data from Ipsos MMR which assures that well-off readers read print publications just as much now as they did 5 years ago.
Also, survey respondents making more than $100,000 annually said their average hours online had grown to 22.1 each week from 10.7, while the time they said they spent watching TV sunk to 18.6 hours from 23.7 in the 2003 survey. Read the full Ives story at http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=130685. Lux 360 attended the client briefing this week and will provide additional perspective in our Sept. 30 issue, interviewing Ipsos MMR President Bob Shullman.
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