A new year—and most notably, a new U.S. presidential administration—are set to impact medical/pharma meetings, but as is typical in a meetings segment that is greatly impacted by government regulations, there is a “wait-and-see” attitude among those who make their living convening medical professionals.
We checked in with medical/pharma meeting planner specialist Jennifer Bechan, strategic account manager for event-management firm Bishop-McCann, which counts numerous medial/pharma meetings organizations in its client portfolio, to gauge the current environment as we enter what may be a new era in one of the most regulated segments of the industry.
At the time of our interview in December, Bechan had just returned from the thinc Pharma & Life Sciences Pharmaceutical and Meeting Planners’ Summit, held in early December in Boston.
As can be imagined in a meetings and events industry segment that is always greatly impacted by government regulations, the change of administrations was top-of-mind at the conference.
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Tyler Davidson: What was the buzz at the conference?
Jennifer Bechan: There was a lot of talk about AI, a lot of talk about industry tech trends, and a lot of talk about what to expect in this next 12 to 48 months, and what kind of impact the new administration is going to have on our industry. We had a great speaker who kicked things off and talked a lot about how do you negotiate, or how do you plan for the unpredictable? There’s a very high level of uncertainty about what’s going to happen in the next couple years, and really kind of exploring how to have a backup plan, but you don’t even really know what’s going to happen.
What are some of the biggest issues impacting the medical meetings segment?
I think the biggest thing I hear a lot is when we do medical meetings, when they’re bringing in health care professionals (HCPs), there’s a big dilemma and stigma around meal caps, right? Everyone’s like, ‘Oh, you know what? You can’t do a program in San Francisco because it’s so expensive; I won’t be able to meet the meal cap.’ There are so many regulations.
Well, the honest truth about meal caps is that they’re not government mandated. It’s just that the government says it needs to be ‘modest and reasonable.’ So, it’s each individual company and each individual pharma company saying this is what we are deeming as reasonable and modest.
I think people realize that you can take a bigger look at it and say, ‘Okay, you know what, what’s the real reason we need to go to San Francisco? Do we really need to go to San Francisco? Can we go somewhere else in California, or a location that maybe is not as expensive as California? Can we go to Tennessee? Can we go to Texas? Can we explore other options—is there business value to actually being in San Francisco?
Years ago, I think you would see a lot of HCP meetings—stand-alone programs like investigator meetings or advisory boards—and [organizers would say], ‘We’re going to have an investigator meeting series [with] one in Dallas and one Chicago, one in Philadelphia—all over the place, which is great—but now we’re seeing more of these meetings being tacked on to an existing meeting because you already have that draw.
So, if you’re targeting physicians that are in oncology, you’re tacking on an advisory board to an existing oncology meeting because those people are already coming. So, you’re not having to pay for their travel and their hotel, and then you can serve a modest meal and still be within regulations and guidelines of those meal caps.
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So, you’re talking about adding on smaller meetings around much larger meetings that are outside of the organization you’re planning for?
I think even more than that. Our clients are looking at the [overall] conference schedule and saying, ‘Oh, American Society of Hematology (ASH)—which is a huge hematology conference that happens every year…They’re looking at that and saying, ‘You know, we’re going to have all these experts from our team at ASH, so we’re just going to fill out the application with the ASH folks and say, ‘Hey, we want to have a dinner, we want to have an advisory board and we want to have this program.’ It’s just a matter of applying for space and getting space at those congresses. So, it’s not necessarily planning outside of that congress window, which is taking advantage of that captive audience already.
Does that result in the programs being a little shorter, because they’re already going to this other three-day conference?
It could be. A lot of our HCPs are not multi-day, anyway. A lot of times they’re just three, four hours—the physicians have got such busy schedules, they typically can’t give you more than that, so we’re really just looking to have that three-, four-hour program with them. Again, if it is something a little bit larger, a multi-day program, then that’s kind of a different scenario; just a short couple hours of breakfast, a midday meeting; we’re even seeing dinners becoming harder to book and get attendance from as well.
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What impact, if any, do life sciences meeting professionals anticipate with the new presidential administration?
I think there’s a lot of heightened awareness of what removing [unauthorized] immigrants could do to the hospitality workforce…What’s that going to do to the hospitality industry? Is it going to return to being short staffed, and then we’re going to have underserved guests at hotels and at restaurants and convention centers? I think that’s going to have a pretty big impact on the hospitality industry.
I also think that there’s a lot of talk about what are other countries’ reaction to the United States going to be? I’m talking about these large conferences where you have attendees coming from the Middle East and Europe and Asia. Are they even going to want to come to the United States? Are they going to be able to get a visa to attend a global program?
How could the implementation of high tariffs on trading partners impact the segment?
When we first started coming back to in-person meetings, an organization would want to do, say, a logo Yeti cup and a vest for all their faculty and give everyone a gift, and we had like eight-, 12-, 14-, 16-week lead times on goods that we were used to getting in our hands in three or four weeks. We’re going to have to start implementing some longer lead times because of possible supply chain issues. I don’t know that our own economy is ready to produce what we’re used to getting from other countries, and I’m guessing all this leads probably to rising prices in the end, right?
Everyone keeps saying, ‘When are we going back to 2019 pricing?’ And the truth is, we’re probably never going back to that pricing. Something we talked about a lot in a couple different sessions is it’s a lot about education; educating our stakeholders: This is how much things cost…just setting the expectations and having that transparency from the get-go. S
