Why group travel is so much more than just advocacy

Ishma Haider:

Advocacy is not a one-day venture, it's something that needs to happen year round. We encourage all of our members, we encourage everyone listening to the podcast, reach out to your local policy makers, really help them understand our industry and what our industry brings, what our industry means to you.

Our theme for GMID this year is Meetings Matter. What do meetings matter to you is something that I would encourage everyone to stress to their policy makers because advocacy is not a one-day thing.

Alyssa:

Great events create great brands, but pulling off an event that engages, excites, and connects audiences, that takes a village. We're that village. My name is Alyssa.

Paulina:

I'm Paulina.

Rachel Andrews:

I'm Rachel.

Felicia Asiedu:

And I'm Felicia.

Alyssa:

And you are listening to Great Events, the podcast for all event enthusiasts, creators, and innovators in the world of events and marketing.

Rachel Andrews:

Hello, everyone. What is going on in this wide, wide world of events? My name is Rachel, and I am your host for this week's episode and of course, joined by my second favorite, just kidding, my favorite co-host, Felicia Asiedu. Hi, Felicia.

Felicia Asiedu:

Hi. How you doing today?

Rachel Andrews:

Oh, great. Just ready for another episode of Great Events. We are celebrating Global Meetings Industry Day, one day early Global Meetings Industry Day is tomorrow, April 11th, but our podcast is today, on April 10th. Meetings obviously matter for a lot of different reasons and our industry is really great about bringing attention to that and celebrating Global Meetings Industry Day, which is an international day of advocacy, showcasing the value of the meetings and events and travel bring, which we thought could be a great opportunity to bring on my dear friend, Ishma Haider. She is the new VP of Group Travel at the U.S. Travel Association. Welcome, Ishma.

Ishma Haider:

Thank you for having me. I've been a long-time listener, and I'm so thrilled to be joining you all today.

Rachel Andrews:

We are happy you are here with us and we're excited to hear all the things travel and events and learn a lot more about the US Travel Association, which a lot of people know about through brand. I don't know if they know about all the cool things that you're doing.

Ishma Haider:

Probably not. My role is so new. I'm the new VP of group travel, so it's probably a lot for us to talk about here.

Rachel Andrews:

Yeah, we got a lot of good stuff. Ishma and I have known each other for a long time. We worked together back when Ishma was at Caesars Entertainment, getting to know each other through planning Cvent Connect, but then also when you moved on to Visit Orlando, just having fun chats about will we won't we move it out of Vegas obviously.

Ishma Haider:

I was pleased to hear the news when you moved to San Antonio. I think I was one of the first people, Rachel, that you told. I was thrilled to hear that news, and then working with you and the team to plan Cvent Connect and bring that to Caesars Entertainment's always been a special moment for me.

Rachel Andrews:

Oh yeah, we had a lot of fun. Let's dive in there. Let's talk about you for a second and then we'll talk about your company. Let's start with the fun stuff of your career journey. Why don't you tell our listeners, let's just give them some backstory of your career journey and how you came from a DMO or even the hotel space to a DMO to then travel association space?

Ishma Haider:

Rachel, I think so many of us in this industry, I fell into this by accident. I didn't know this was an industry, I didn't know this was the career path that I was going to take. I started off in advertising, I was an advertising agency girl, so I worked on major brands like Carfax, Pet Boys, and moved to Las Vegas to join Caesar's Entertainment and had an opportunity to meet Mike Massari and Raina Hershofer. Those of you who have met them know what incredible personalities they are, and I never looked back. You can say the rest was history.

I joined the national Events marketing team for Caesar's Entertainment, and I was there for eight years working on all their marketing material. I was lucky enough that I got to work on Hera's Waterfront Conference Center in Atlantic City and open up that facility, and then also open up Caesar's Forum in Las Vegas, which was just a pivotal property in the meeting space.

I got to learn the meetings industry from some of the greatest mentors alive, I would say in the meeting space. Mike Massari, Raina Hershofer, Lisa Messina, Kelly Smith, these were just all mentors of mine that I was so lucky just to pick up on the meetings industry just by being in the same room by them. I started off my career at Caesar's Entertainment and then my journey led me to Visit Orlando. I was with Caesar's for eight years, and then I joined Visit Orlando at the height of the pandemic, March 2020, I decided to move cross country and start a new job.

I moved cross country with my family. I was able to join Visit Orlando and just working at the DMO space was an incredible experience. The best piece of feedback I got when I joined Visit Orlando was you're going to be in a fishbowl and everyone is going to look at every decision you make and man, where they write because it was a different experience than Caesar's Entertainment. We're a corporate business, we're wining and dining people at Nobu and ordering the best of the best. We have Giada popping in for our events, and at Visit Orlando it was very... It's taxpayer tax dollars and you're in a fishbowl. Everyone really is questioning and looking at every decision you make.

What an experience to work at Visit Orlando. I was able to launch a new brand, Unbelievably Real, it's a brand, Rachel and Felicia, that carries over through all the different verticals within travel. Unbelievably Real is used in both group travel, leisure, and international, but the interesting part is that it speaks to each traveler differently. That was really Cassandra Amatze's vision when she joined as a CEO for Visit Orlando. I had the opportunity to work with Cassandra, Mike Waterman, Danielle Hollander, our CMO at Visit Orlando, and Stephanie Magley, and it was just an incredible experience.

I was not looking for my new venture and just as life plans it, the new venture came about through US Travel Association and I get to work with some brilliant minds like Jeff Freeman, Ellen Davis, Tori Barnes, and Delisa Schwartz, and just the incredible team we have here that is just so passionate about travel.

Felicia Asiedu:

I love hearing that journey to VP and I love the fact that you started with, "I fell into this and now I'm the VP."

Ishma Haider:

I drunk the meetings industry Kool-Aid. I truly believe in the value that face-to-face meetings provide, and there is no looking back for me.

Rachel Andrews:

I love it. She just dropped so many hard-hitting names without even missing a beat. You're learning from the best of the best, but also you're the best of the best. I'm glad that they saw that in you, and you're on your journey at US Travel Association. Speaking of, let's tell our listeners what your association is and does. Take us through what the US Travel Association actually does.

Ishma Haider:

Thank you. The US Travel Association, we're a national nonprofit representing all components of the US travel industry. As the united voice of the industry, US Travel prioritizes high impact issues that matter most to our collective membership.

We not only identify the industry's biggest opportunities and challenges, but also develop the messages and actions to propel the industry forward. We engage with our members by providing them with tools, research, and resources needed to influence change with policymakers and the community at large.

Rachel Andrews:

I feel like there's so many different things. If you go to the US Travel Association website, for me, when I think of the US Travel Association, I think of advocacy, I think of IPW, I think of some of the events that you all do, but I don't I think of it as a membership organization.

Before we get into advocacy, can you talk a little bit more about if members join, what are they joining for? I'm assuming education, because most associations, that's their main bread and butter, but what from your perspective is why they join?

Ishma Haider:

It's funny you bring that up, Rachel. I was at a speaking engagement recently in San Francisco and I asked that question. I said, "What do you think the US Travel Association is?" I'm a blank sheet of paper, I just started, what do you think we do? Overwhelmingly, there were like 75 people in that crowd that were like, "You're our advocacy arm." I was like, "Yes, but we're so much more."

We're not your one trick pony. Advocacy is something we're very good at, we're very strong at, but we are a membership organization at our core. With us, our members are everything to us. We listen to our members and then we try to find those themes that are prevalent amongst all our members so that we can provide resources to help them be smarter in their business.

Whether that's through research, which we know research has to be our calling card at US Travel, and we just hired a new VP of research, Josh Friedlander. Whether it's through our research, whether it's through our content, providing turnkey graphics and messaging that our members can use, or through our advocacy efforts, we just want to help our members be stronger in their business and push travel forward.

Felicia Asiedu:

When you said people are like, "You're our advocacy arm," do you feel like they are understanding how they access all of the things that you just said you provide? Because we have similar issues over here in Europe, we have a MPI chapter here, and we have similar issues. We wonder what do you get out of being a member? I think it's just unlocking those here go this way, you can find these things. Do you think that there's that struggle that you're facing where people just don't know where to go?

Ishma Haider:

Totally, Felicia. 100%. I think it's multitude. We interact a lot with the CEOs within the organizations and I think sometimes that intimidates others within the organization that they can't interact with us, but that's not the case. We have so many different forums for people to interact with us. Yes, we have our DMOs CEO Roundtable, we have a research advocacy committee, we have a committee for communication, so we have different subcommittees. I'm building a committee for people that are passionate in the group space.

What this helps us do is it helps us build our agenda and for me, when I'm so new in my role, when I'm building out what's important to group [inaudible 00:09:50] as a whole, it gives me a litmus test. I can call people like you, Felicia, I can call people like Rachel and say, "I'm working on this. What do you think? Do you think this will land? Do you think this kind of helps solve what we're trying to do?" But you're absolutely right, people don't understand the wealth of information available. Even the meetings means business coalition, which is something that is part of US Travel, sometimes people don't associate meetings means business with us travel.

Same with IPW, which is one of our signature events, people don't necessarily correlate US Travel as owning IPW. There's a wide variety of our resources being available and people not knowing about them, people being hesitant to interact with us and then just not being aware of the different events and how they fall under US Travel.

Rachel Andrews:

Who are your core members? I know for us, we say meetings and events industry and that a lot of times includes procurement, travel, HR, it includes so much more than just your traditional event planner. The term we're trying to get away from, it's more like event professional or event strategist for us. I feel like they do so much more and it just depends on what's under your role, but I'm sure you have a wide variety of members.

Ishma Haider:

It's all the members of travel anywhere from airlines to destination management organizations to go hoteliers to DMCs. We covered the gamut. It's interesting, Rachel, you bring up the term event strategist and meetings and events. My term, role is group travel. When I first heard it, I'm like man, this is an antiquated term, group travel. Shouldn't it be meetings and events? That's what we do. It's MICE.

[Inaudible 00:11:21] Europe, and when we spoke with our members and I asked them just that question, they said, "Meetings and events limits us and our different market sports is very big." Certainly youth sports certainly I knew brought Orlando back during the pandemic. They're like we're focusing on sports, we're focusing on these different things, and when you say meetings and events, that just limits us. When you say group and group was defined as 10 plus people traveling for a common purpose, it just opens up the doors for us. I was like all right, you made me a believer. Group travel. I'm on board. So yes, I'm the VP of group travel for us travel cessation.

Rachel Andrews:

Oh, man. Even Bachelorette could be group travel. I was like ten plus. That's so low.

Ishma Haider:

It's a social event. Even the Taylor Swift concerts count.

Rachel Andrews:

That helps I think level set too your membership base for our listeners. You guys do so much that it feels maybe overwhelming when you look at your website. When you actually dig into some of the things that you're doing, and just even mentioning meetings mean business and IPW and all these brand names that you see out there in the industry, and GMID, it's a lot. You all are doing so much, I feel like you need to claim more credit for all the things that you're doing for the industry.

Ishma Haider:

It's a new time for us. Jeff, our CEO has been here for a little over a year. We have some new leadership in play. It's something that we're working towards. We really want to build a best-in-class association. We want people to engage with us. Rachel and Felicia, I always say this, it's very true. I'm open to feedback.

My running joke is if I have spinach in my teeth, you need to tell me. You need to give me that feedback. If there's feedback that you're like you're not doing this right or Ishma, where the heck are you? I needed this. Pick up the phone, call me, email me. We're your association. We're here for you, we want you to engage with us. Whether it's through work for an events, whether it's through social, we are your association, we represent the travel industry, and we encourage everyone to be engaged with us.

Felicia Asiedu:

Love that. We know how important travel is at C-Vet. We look after lots of people that are having to look after travel and business transient. To you, I heard you say travel is essential. What does that mean?

Ishma Haider:

Felicia, travel is still seen as this volatile industry. It's seen as a luxury, it's seen as a nice-to-have. That's true with policy makers, it's true with c-suite executives, CFOs find it an easy line item to cut. What travel unlocks, the experience to connect with one another in person, the experience to connect with a different city, connect with different cultures, that's not replaceable by Zoom.

Most people, 60% of people turn off their Zoom camera after 27 minutes. Most communications done through body language. If you don't have your camera on, you're losing on those messages, you're losing on that feel. Nothing replaces the value of face-to-face and nothing replaces travel. Travel is essential, and if we take our foot off the gas pedal, we're going to lose traction.

We're still seen as this volatile industry 20 years later, this is what we're hearing from our members, 20 years later, people still see us as not an industry, they see us as a volatile industry and we need to change that perception. In America, there's this thought that manufacturing is king. When we all rally behind manufacturing and talk about manufacturing, travels our biggest export and getting people to come to the United States experience our culture experience what we have, there's nothing like it. There's nothing that will replace it.

Felicia Asiedu:

I can relate. Here I am, I'm just a marketer working in my organization. I had always heard about Cvent Connect, which you guys were talking about earlier. I'd hear a lot about it's big, it's vast, but until I went and experienced it myself and came to America and drank all that Kool-Aid, there's nothing like it. It blows you away and just makes you really absorb and take in exactly what education is, the entertainment, it's definitely essential for me.

Ishma Haider:

I think being in the same room too, Felicia. As adults, face-to-face meetings provide education. We provide those that professional experience opportunities for us, it provides that networking, it provides that sense of community that we all need. Being able to connect with your peers, understanding you're not a unicorn that's in a silo on an island by itself, being able to connect with one another, bounce ideas off of each other. We're humans, we like to be around other humans and play off of each other, which is so essential to us.

Rachel Andrews:

In your new role, I know this wasn't on our list of questions, so sorry if I'm throwing a fastball at you, but in your new role for group travel, what are your main goals? What are you bringing to the industry? Because group travel is such a big piece. You're basically saying you're the new VP of all the meetings and events industry and traveling for those things.

By the way, I'm reading your role, which is huge. What are you actually doing in your role for your members, but to help the association at large?

Ishma Haider:

This position, Rachel, was created by... It's Jeff Freeman's vision because he understood that travel's not a monolith. You have to speak to an international traveler differently than you do a group traveler differently than you do to a leisure traveler. He was very clear with me. He said, "Ishma, I need you to wake up every day in the morning and think about how to protect and grow group travel." I said to him, I said, "Jeff, good news for you is I did that anyways before you gave me this job." I've been passionate about group travel for a long time, so no surprise, it's something I wake up in the morning, it's something that I love, talking about group travel.

But Rachel, you're right, my job is pretty daunting when you take a look at it. It's really to coalesce all the key members of group travel, so that's non-leaders within Cvent. Reggie was on our board previously and he's always been a staunch supporter of meetings meet business, but rallying the troops around the importance of group travel, working with our third party planners, working with our media, our trade media, working with our destinations, working with our hotels, and just coalescing these key players together, talking about the agenda of how to move group travel together.

They're a little bit of my kitchen cabinet, they're on my litmus test and I bounce ideas off of them. Right now, I'm 90 days in and I've already met with 75 people, so I think I'm doing pretty good so far. I've been doing a lot of listening tours, but the next step really is getting in this group together because there is value in us meeting, coalescing, sharing our ideas on how to move group travel forward, and then building resources to help.

What I've heard overwhelmingly from members is you could give us content, just turnkey content, which is something we do with our toolkit for Global Meetings Industry Day, for example, turnkey content that we can use throughout the year to talk about the value of face-to-face meetings. We're looking at different resources we can provide. Certainly research needs to be our calling card at US Travel, so what research can we provide our members? Those are just some of the things I have on the docket.

Rachel Andrews:

No small feat. I do want to touch on advocacy, I know that's a one piece of what you all do, but it is really important for our industry is advocating for it. I always say this to my family members, still to this day, I think my dad finally gets it, but it took almost two decades to understand what I actually do. I don't just plan parties, that's maybe one-tenth of it, but I always say meetings mean business.

When you talk about what meetings mean business means, and just even knowing what the total market of value is that our meetings bring from a financial standpoint, bringing that to Destination Capital Hill is one of the things that you all do. Even Global Meetings Industry Day bringing awareness to the importance of events, how does that advocacy arm work and how important it is for you all?

Ishma Haider:

Absolutely. We just wrapped up Destination Capitol Hill, where we had more than 300 travel leaders from all 50 states, DC, and Puerto Rico join us to help educate policy makers about the power of travel. Rachel and Felicia, advocacy is not a one-day venture, it's something that needs to happen year round. We encourage all of our members, we encourage everyone listening to the podcast, reach out to your local policy makers, really help them understand our industry and what our industry brings, what our industry means to you.

Our theme for GMID this year is meetings matter. What do meetings matter to you is something that I would encourage everyone to stress to their policy makers because advocacy is not a one-day thing. When we talk about meetings means business, when we talk about meetings, the meetings industry is larger than both fashion and automobile. What we bring to the communities at large, and the economic value that we bring is unparalleled and unmatched.

Rachel Andrews:

I think MID last year, or GMID, I feel like everyone says it differently. Global Meetings Industry Day, all the things. I think there's 100 events that go on. I know that the official stat is 70, but I know there's more that people probably don't report on, and that was just last year and this year. I feel like every year it gains more and more traction. People that are in the MICE space or in the meetings and events industry at large are hashtagging on that day, they're doing other things, maybe they're just doing a webinar, but that still counts as something that they're doing towards this. It's incredible.

Ishma Haider:

It is. Rachel, we would encourage everyone to engage in the day, report your activity. By reporting your activity, you help US Travel have visibility into those events so we can amplify the reach of your events, and so we can include it on our messaging channels and help provide information on our different channels as well.

We'd encourage you to get involved with Global Meetings Industry Day. I remember, Rachel and Felicia, when Global Meetings Industry Day was NAMID, North American Meetings Industry Day, and Mike Massari came into our office as Caesar's and said, "Marketing team, US Travel has this initiative for the group market. It's called North American Meetings Industry Day. This is the day. All right." We were like, "Can we give a little bit more boss?"

I remember that first day of celebrating NAMID, activating it right in front of the high roller and the different events we did and Las Vegas. We really collaborated and we were like this goes beyond MGM, Caesar's, Venetian, this is about the good of the industry. It was a unique meeting because you had Chandra Allison, you had Mike Massari, and you had Mike Dominguez at MGM at that time all sitting at the same table talking about the value of meetings and what we were going to do. That's powerful to have these great minds in Las Vegas at that time talk about the value of the industry.

Meetings means business, it gives us the opportunity to talk about ourselves as an industry, which is so essential. For so many years, we didn't realize we were an industry, we didn't realize the impact we had and it caught us flat-footed. We went through that situation when President Obama made a comment in 2008 about the frivolous meeting spend. We were caught as an industry without any talking points, without any speaking points about the value that we provide and the economic impact that we make.

We're lucky that we don't have that situation. Nobody is attacking meetings, but the best offense... I mean the good... What is it? I'm so bad at sports analogies.

Felicia Asiedu:

Best offense is good defense, is that right?

Ishma Haider:

Best offense is a good defense, okay.

Rachel Andrews:

I was at a financial company in 2008 when meetings and events were the antichrist. It was like this is what's destroying our economy, and it was like an attack on our industry. I remember half of our organization from the marketing side was let go because obviously there was the crash, but then it was almost like an attack on travel and on meetings.

This is going to help us rebuild. I think for all the bad things we'll say COVID was horrible, but COVID did prove that we need this to keep our economy going. We need travel, we need meetings and events, we need face-to-face, we need experiences to drive business. These two horrible situations, we had one on one side being this was horrible for... We were being attacked, and then on the other side, people were like this is actually really important. That dichotomy was just so interesting.

That's why I think advocacy and being prepared and having those talking points, arming the industry with it so that when you are talking to your parents at the dinner table or your aunt who has no idea what a meeting or an event or an incentive travel is, you can actually speak to the bigger impact that it brings.

Ishma Haider:

I would add, especially in this day and age where everything's so doctored where you Photoshopped images and you have things coming out of AI, events have become that tangible asset for you to really attend and you experience things in real life. I would say I had a customer client who had a meeting and I asked, What's the importance of meeting in person?" She goes, "There's no such thing as a virtual beer." I said, "I can't use that, but oh my god, that's 100% percent spot on."

Felicia Asiedu:

We had this recently, we've been talking about AI, we hate to bring AI into every single conversation, but one of our speakers was saying 40% of people in the world are going to vote this year, which is insane. It's 2 billion or something because there's voting happening all across the world. Actually the only reality you can get, just like you said, is at a meeting, at a rally, at an event where you know that person said what they said and you can say that is true because I was there, I heard it.

Once it starts circulating the internet, who knows in this day and age, but to come together and have that reality and be galvanized by the people that are next to you and say yeah, this is the way I want to go, you won't get that at anything else than coming together.

Ishma Haider:

It's those authentic experiences that we pride ourselves on it in the industry, and I would say as meetings means business and what we were really keen at during that time was we unified the industry. We rallied together, we all united, and we all from the same song sheet, which is so important. Now you have a consistent message that everyone is saying no matter where in the country you're from or where in the world you're from, we came together and said, "We are an industry. This is what we do. This is our importance."

Felicia and Rachel, I would love for Global Meetings Industry Day to take it a step forward. Yes, we celebrate each other as an industry, but I want my next door neighbor, Bob, to understand that when a citywide's in town, that's why he's making his month's rent in one night through the tips he's receiving at the restaurant. I want my mom to finally understand what I do for a living, that would just make my life a lot easier.

Rachel Andrews:

I think you're right. The one step forward is educating all the fringe industries too and the government to understand how much... I think you doing advocacy with US Travel Association helps the government understand if we got to keep beating that drum for that to happen.

Ishma Haider:

I was just going to chime in, Rachel, but the Super Bowl, when the halftime show happens, one of my most passionate items is the halftime show itself. When Rihanna is on those clouds and the rigging that takes place and how they turned that stadium around so quickly.

When I was interviewing with Jeff, I brought this up and I said, "I want to talk... That's important from the group side. I want Good Morning America to cover that." Jeff looked at me and he said, "Ishma, you're not a sports fan, are you?" I said, "Well, I wouldn't say that, but yeah, I'm really passionate about groups, so that's what gets my mind rigging."

When you saw Usher during the halftime show at Allegiant State, that's what I was thinking about. [inaudible 00:26:38] that Las Vegas was hosting this show with all the hotels connected and the rigging and all that, that's what my mind was…

Felicia Asiedu:

They're broadcasting this football game.

Ishma Haider:

[inaudible 00:26:48] feel like the football game, Ishma, it's not just all about [inaudible 00:26:52].

Rachel Andrews:

No, it was the Usher concert. It was the Usher concert, yep. There was just a little bit of football in between. I want to talk about events really quick and then we can talk trends for our group here. You all just put a press release out that you just hired an SVP of events, which is exciting. My event peeps will love when we see these higher title positions going up because events are strategic and they are driving business.

Just with your group travel new title and this new person coming in, can you give us more insight to your events program? I know we touched on IPW, but I know you all are committed to events importance. Can you touch a little bit on that?

Ishma Haider:

Absolutely. New events are core to US Travel. IPW and SDR are part of our foundation and we're thrilled to have Amy Gable join us. She is a rock star, she just brings innovation, collaboration, and really, Amy was brought on to really look at the current events that we have and see how we can innovate them. How can we make them better? Let's not just do things the way we've done them, let's see how we could turn this up on its head, see how we can increase the different offerings we have for the people attending, what education can we have, how can we simplify messages?

She's been looking at our current portfolio and God bless her, she's 15 days in and she's already integral with the team and she's on a site visit right now, and she just works with all of us collaboratively to see the forest through the trees and help us look at different innovative solutions, not only for the events we have, but the events we may have in the future.

Felicia Asiedu:

Amazing. I just love the roles and the seniority of the roles, like Rachel said, that is so important so people have a voice that are meeting professionals, like we said, events professionals and not just you're planning for small weddings or something. It has to have real view that they are strategic, they are senior, they're at the table and making good decisions.

Rachel Andrews:

I have to meet her because I feel like the people that come into companies and breathe innovation into events are really important to our industry. I'm going to say it because maybe some of our listeners are thinking it, association events can become stale sometimes and it's important to keep a pulse on what your members want and it's important to keep a pulse on what the industry wants.

I'm not saying... I think IPW does a great job. You guys were in San Antonio before Cvent Connect and we're looking at a lot of the things that IPW did. I think breathing that innovation for an association is really important because you want your members to be happy, you want people to keep coming back. If you just do the same thing every time, then that's not great. Amy is her name, right? I'm excited to see what Amy does next for you all.

Ishma Haider:

Amy's just a powerhouse. She's already trucking and you said it right, as an association, something Jeff challenges us with, it's what our executive leadership challenges us with, we have to be flexible and nimble and innovative. People invest a lot of time when they come to our events, so we need to make it worth their while. When people don't come to our events, they need to have FOMO. Oh my God, I can't believe I missed that event from US Travel.

We are an association, but we want to be first in class. We want to be best in class, and I'll tell you, our executive leadership team challenges us and they're like future state, let's change this thinking. You can't think the same way. If we've done this the same way 25 years the same way, let's look at it differently. How can we change it? There's always areas of opportunity.

Felicia Asiedu:

Yeah, and that's so important. As we round out this podcast, just thinking about you being the trailblazers and leading the way. People are often looking to you for trends. They want to know what's coming, what's next, what's new. What are you hearing from your members around the trends in travel?

Ishma Haider:

The travel trends that we're hearing from, Felicia, from our members and what we're seeing, when the travel industry thrives, America thrives. In 2023, travelers in the United States directly spent $1.3 trillion, which produced an economic footprint of $2.8 trillion and supported more than 15 million American jobs. In the meetings and events space, travel contributed $119 billion in spending to the US economy in 2023. That's about that recovered to 2019, though.

Felicia Asiedu:

I hear you. You've been saying it travels essential, it's important, but when you put it into those numbers, and this is what I was saying about being strategic, to be able to put those numbers in front of somebody, in front of your board, in front of your CEOs and say it is important that we travel because it brings in revenue, it brings in money. I know you gave us stats there for America, but that is worldwide. That is essential for everybody across the globe. Amazing stats.

Rachel Andrews:

I just love that we're back and we're traveling again, so that's great. Thank you, Ishma, for joining. Any other final parting words or what should we be looking out for you? I feel like I'm going to follow you on LinkedIn and look out for all the cool updates coming out for your events program, but also group travel and all the great things that you're going to do for that industry.

Ishma Haider:

Thank you for this opportunity, Rachel and Felicia. Thank you for your listeners for the time. I would say please engage with us US Travel. Subscribe to our newsletters, visit our social channels, engage with our content there. We're your association, so we want to make sure that we're serving you. We're here for your needs. I am looking forward to Global Meetings Industry Day tomorrow and looking forward to seeing how everyone celebrates that day, so I look forward to seeing everyone's posts.

After that, we have National Travel and Tourism week, so we would encourage everyone to participate in that. And I would just say engage. We're your industry, we're your association, and we have to make a voice and we have to stand together.

Rachel Andrews:

Amazing. We'll link to all this. I know that US Travel Association has great links for GMID toolkits and just more information on what they do on Capitol Hill. Obviously, you can connect with Ishma on LinkedIn and follow all the amazing things that she and her team are doing. Thanks for joining us today. I learned a lot. I feel like I love doing these podcasts because we learn so much.

Felicia Asiedu:

Can I just say, Ishma, you are super passionate. I feel like I've left this feeling like yeah, it is important. Thank you so much. It's pretty cool.

Ishma Haider:

I definitely do. If you've heard me, I know at Visit Orlando, I would have to give soapbox talks about the group travel industry and our poor advertising agency, they heard it from me on a soapbox so many times, like we're larger than fashion, we're larger than automobile. I've been doing this spiel for a little bit.

Rachel Andrews:

We love it. Keep going, keep that passion up because I think it really does impact all of us. Thank you again and to our listeners, we'll see you next time.

Alyssa:

Thanks for hanging out with us on Great Events, a podcast by Cvent. If you've been enjoying our podcast, make sure to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode.

Rachel Andrews:

You can also help fellow event professionals and marketers just like you discover great events by leaving us a rating on Apple, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform.

Felicia Asiedu:

Stay connected with us on all your socials for behind-the-scenes content, updates, and some extra doses of inspiration.

Paulina:

Got a burning question or an epic story to share? We want to hear from you. Find us on LinkedIn and send us a DM or drop us a note at greatevents@cvent.com.

Rachel Andrews:

A big thanks to our amazing listeners, our guest speakers, and the incredible team behind the scenes. Remember, every great event includes great people.

Alyssa:

That's a wrap. Keep creating, keep innovating, and keep joining us as we redefine how to make events great.