Meeting planners take note of behavior changes taking place among meeting attendees. Consider these factors: the percentage of the population on weight-loss or diabetic drugs is having an impact on food and beverage; golf has experienced the second largest growth rate in history particularly among women; and ALHI CEO Michael Domingez suggests planners survey attendees more frequently. All this and more in this issue of Connecting the Dots.
Michael Dominguez: I wanted to talk a little bit about behavior changes and things that I think are going to impact how we think about meetings, and how you think about your attendees and caring for them while they are participating in your events. One of the things I've really been highlighting – it’s been some great research from the National Golf Federation – and what you find is golf is back in a big way.
I don't know if golf has been as prominent in meetings as it was in the past and what you're finding is a whole new audience. We've had the second largest growth rate in history as far as golf growth between 17 and 25. That mirrors the rate we saw of golf exploding in the 1990s. What I think is very interesting; it is a lot of beginners. Beginners are one of the fastest percentages of growth in this market. The growth in golf is also on course and off course, which means you could talk about swing-based, things being internal, but golf being the focus of that activity. Again, that is a little bit of a shift, but what I found fascinating is women actually contributed 52% of the entire growth we've seen during that pattern. That again is a tremendous amount of growth from a game that did not have that type of predominance with women golfers. That is phenomenal. But it's something we have to keep in mind when we think about activities, what was important, what isn't. We used to always have golf affiliated with most events, and that kind of dwindled away as did some of that interest in golf. But it's exploded once again, so keep that in mind. Be ready for it.
One of the other things, and we've been talking about this for quite some time, has to do with alcohol consumption and the large drop in alcohol consumption. Realize that we have a society that's very much focused on wellness. Drinking much less. The younger the generation, the less they're drinking. But even all generations are drinking less.
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Then it leads into another piece – the percentage of the population that is on some type of weight-loss drug or diabetic drug is having an impact not only on drinking, but on food. And this is something we're going to have to think about. I think it's going to become even more prominent with the fact that they have now created a pill instead of a shot for some of these weight-loss opportunities. The reason for that is the diet changes.
Think about the breaks that we've traditionally had in the meetings and events area. It's a lot of sugar, it’s a lot of candy, a lot of cookies, and that is not going to line well with the diabetic drug.
The other piece to this is we all know that the No. 1 word in diet today is protein. It's all about protein. So how are we changing our breaks? How are we changing that thought process as we have a society and once again a consumer that is changing their dietary needs?
I think it's going to be as prevalent as any other kind of allergies that we've seen in the past when it comes to food and beverage, and it's going to have to be something we think about.
Last, and not least, we're once again talking about the experience economy, and I only laugh because I've been doing this long enough I think it's the third reset around the experience economy, and it just reminds us that experience is always at the core, and always will be at the core of what we're trying to deliver. But how do we make the experience more engaging? How do we remember that the reason we're meeting and the reason we're face to face is for the humanity of coming together?
How do we build on that human connection? How do we make it more interactive? That is something that everybody is asking for, one, as an attendee. We used to say this, and it’s back in vogue, is simply you no longer have attendees of meetings, you have participants. How do you get them to participate in the meeting and truly engage and interact so that it's in a meaningful way?
And then lastly, how do we measure and how do we get better measurements around this? I think that is going to be the challenge that came up in the American Express Meeting and Event Survey for 2026. Its measurement is one of the main challenges. So please pay attention. I would survey your attendees much more frequently, especially if you have it, to see if dietary changes have changed, if lifestyles have changed, and especially on the alcohol consumption. Having a single mocktail no longer does it. It's having multiple mocktail or nonalcoholic options. It's having multiple nonalcoholic beers. Every major distributor today has a nonalcoholic version of their beers. That is because that's where we're headed and we're going to have to be accommodating for that if we're going to be inclusive as a society when we put our meetings together. So once again, thanks for joining us. We hope this is helpful and we'll be back with you with more information.