The passage of time has a way of muting the memories of troubled times.
Fact is, once images of the posh St. Regis Monarch Beach Resort flooded the network newscasts and the Internet in September 2008, skittish planners avoided many properties that smacked of luxury.
Planners couldn’t immediately combat the daily onslaught of lavish spending figures of the AIG meeting being reported, such as $7,000 in golf greens fees and $23,280 in spa treatments.
The phenomenon commonly known as the AIG Effect, a backlash against meetings and incentives that were viewed as overly luxurious, took hold.
Companies that had accepted taxpayer bailouts were instantly under intense pressure to justify their meeting and incentive programs, and many were petrified to be photographed playing golf at a resort.
“I had some clients tell me they could not go to any property with the word ‘resort’ in its name,” Schmaltz says.
A few anxious properties removed ‘resort’ from their names. The Renaissance Orlando Resort at SeaWorld became the Renaissance Orlando Hotel at SeaWorld; Ballantyne Resort in Charlotte, N.C., changed to Ballantyne Hotel & Lodge; and Westin Stonebriar Hotel & Resort near Dallas became the Westin Stonebriar.
Some of the most ardent critics did not understand the concept of staging meetings in a resort setting. They simply couldn’t comprehend the highly successful practice of rewarding top employees and sales people at an upscale resort.
Many industry observers say the AIG effect began subsiding in mid-summer 2009 as the St. Regis Monarch Beach Resort went into foreclosure.