PREDSEDOVANJE EU 2008 EU Presidency 2008 PREDSTAVITEV ...

speak of three target groups of
potential congress organisers.
The first group are the organisers
of scientific/expert events who
are, as a rule, members of various
expert economic or interest
groups. Often these are heads,
professors and researchers at
faculties, institutes or hospitals.
According to information from the
international organisation ICCA,
a distinguishing feature of
scientific/expert meetings is that
each interest group organises
meetings and that these meetings
are held on a repetitive basis, with
changes of destination. Although
an international organisation
chooses the destination, the offer
for the organisation of the event in
a specific country should always
be entrusted to a local member.
When acquiring scientific/expert
events, contact with Slovenian
experts is important, particularly
those who are members of
various international associations.
The second segment consists
of the organisers of economic/
corporate events. ICCA defines
these as events that frequently
return to the same location,
where companies themselves
choose the destination and where
the meetings are smaller and with
more financial funding available.
Organisers of these meetings are
often marketing departments and
personnel offices. Fifty per cent of
companies decline to organise
meetings in countries where they
do not have a representative
office. This is why it is of primary
impor- 6 tance to establish
contact with the representative
offices of foreign companies
within countries and, through
them, obtain contact with their
parent companies or other
representative offices, particularly
in countries representing target
markets for suppliers of the
meetings industry. Such an approach will enable the acquisition
of regional meetings and incentive trips.
We can classify the organisers of events for state and political
organisations as the third group. These are the representatives
of various ministries, state administrations, foreign embassies,
international political integrations, European Union institutions and so
on. Meetings of state and political organisations are always extremely
precise and strictly planned and associated with rigid state protocols.
They either have wide media coverage or are often in secret, and they
are especially demanding in terms of operatives and implementation.
To obtain such events, contacts with various civil servants in public
administration are of extreme importance, and those contact details
can quite easily be found on the internet.
Special target groups, not associated with this classification of meeting
events are the so-called PCOs (Professional Meeting Organisers),
AMCs (Association Management Companies), and DMCs (Destination
Management Companies). These serve as intermediaries between
congress organisers and congress hotels or meeting venues. They
often represent an excellent go-between in the relationship with the
client in the search and selection of event locations. It is also advisable
to maintain genuine and long-term business relationships with this
group of business partners. Of course, quality databases on customers
are a good support for your entire direct marketing activity, which
should be supported using CRM information technology if possible.
How to acquire information on potential customers
Information on potential clients and events can also be obtained by
monitoring the numerous varieties of media available (announcements,
advertisements and invitations to participate in various conferences,
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