DETROIT
The 2015 ASAE Annual Meeting & Expo is ready to wrap up Tuesday in Detroit, attracting some 5,300 attendees to the Motor City for this year’s big show.
The meeting’s location in Detroit represented a victory for the city, in that its last bid for the event—a little more than a decade ago—failed because Detroit’s Cobo Center was in much need of a renovation and the city did not have adequate housing to accommodate the number of attendees expected.
“We’re a little more than honored—we’re actually thrilled to have this association in town,” said Larry Alexander, president and CEO of the Detroit Metro CVB. “Hosting ASAE will have a major impact on our future, because of the opportunity to get more association business.”
Alexander echoed a common sentiment that Detroit, which is recovering from a bankruptcy filed in 2013, is now benefiting from major investments such as thise made by Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert, who has bought more than 70 buildings to attract entrepreneurs and workers to downtown Detroit. The city is also creating a buzz by attracting a variety of young entrepreneurs drawn by its low overhead costs and tradition of ingenuity.
“The comeback is swift and it is real,” Alexander said, adding that Cobo Center recently completed a $279 million renovation, with ASAE being the first convention to benefit, and the city has seen some $11 billion of private investment since 2010.
Alexander said Detroit hosted four citywides in 2011, which jumped to 14 this year, tripling its operating revenue and resulting in 170,000 room nights sold this year, compared to 28,000 in 2011. ASAE estimates that approximately 20 percent of the attendees will book a meeting in Detroit in the next five years, bringing $500 million in revenue to the city.
ASAE President & CEO John Graham IV announced a number of initiatives the association of associations is working on and preparing to launch in January 2015. Prominent among them is a relaunch of ASAE’s website, www.asaecenter.org, highlighted by making the site have a “mobile-first” format and a top-to-bottom website architecture reorganization, and the addition of a standalone career-focused website, Association CareerHQ.
The free-standing career website will feature a variety of tools to help users advance their careers, including a blog, salary information, career-focused videos, the association’s new learning modules and information and tools to help associations that are looking to hire executives and other employees.
Other major initiatives planned for a January 2015 launch include a new hybrid, organizational membership model that will be segmented into small (one to nine employees), medium (10 to 49 employees) and large (50 or more employees) associations, and a content strategy loyalty program that will allow organizations to buy credits that can be used to purchase everything from online education to participation in ASAE’s annual meeting.
An interesting facet of this year’s gathering is ASAE’s “Experience Guru” program, under which a number of attendees were prompted to review certain aspects of the show throughout the event, allowing the association to make real-time decisions to remedy any negative aspects.
Graham said the association has a goal of increasing its number of members to 55,000 by 2018, up from its current 21,000 members.
The overall attendance of approximately 5,300 can be broken down into 2,802 association executives, 1,795 exhibitors and 703 “others,” with a ratio of 61 percent buyers to 39 percent sellers. There were a total of 684 booths from 431 companies on the exhibition floor.
—Tyler Davidson
