Meeting Industry Still Taking Mulligan's with ROI

Despite solid evidence from the training industry that ROI is irrelevant at the ‘event’ level, the meeting industry still has individuals taking swing after swing to have ROI land as a value measure of meetings.

The July Golf supplement issue from Successful Meetings was informative and accurate. The only distraction was the ROI reference on the cover.

Edward Schmidt, Jr. did a great job with the main article golf meetings bring stimulus to business. He managed to cover a great deal, include specific examples, and not once did he mention ROI in his article.

Peter Bonnell hit a hole-in-one with his acknowledgement of meeting planners being the key to communicating the value of golf.

Jo Ann Hoffman shot eagle with her comment that the game is an educational process that brings out one's character during the game.

Michael Wilkins reference to the value lessons incorporated in the game were a victory for the link between golf and business meetings.

It was a shame that the cover, again went to the misleading term ROI. While the training industry has begun to acknowledge that ROI is an irrelevant measure for individual programs and events, and also suggests that attempts to promote ROI as a value measure look foolish to the financial executives of organizations, it seems the meeting industry is still trying to mis quantify the value of meetings with the application of the ROI terminology. It is especially unfortunately because pushing for ROI valuation for events by the meeting industry it is an example of the very ignorance regarding meeting value that the industry should be fighting.

Clear, forthright communication is the key to meeting valuation getting back in the fairway, and continually attempts to misalign financial terminology to fabricate a measurement of a meetings value is like cheating on your golf card.

Jeffrey Hanslerjhansler@oxfordco.com