the industry exec

Chris White
Make sure it's "first class"
Fall 2010

CHRIS WHITE is the founder, chairman and CEO of Krisam Group and its sister company, Global Events Partners (GEP).  Chris is a member of the Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association International’s Hall of Fame and was recognized by Business Travel News as one of the industry’s “25 Most Influential Executives.”

MPG: What attracted you to this industry?

Chris:  In 1963, I graduated from Tufts University not knowing what I wanted to do.  I took the best job that was offered, working for Bell Telephone, and I hated it.

A fraternity brother, David Troy, was working at a hotel in Cleveland.  I went to see him, enjoyed Bloody Marys for breakfast and at lunch we talked about his job -- director of sales for the property.  At the end of the evening, and after a few more cocktails, I got my credit card out to share the expenses and he said, “This is all a business write-off.”  I said, “You mean to tell me we ate and drank all day and it’s not costing us one dime?”  The next day I was on an airplane to the company’s headquarters in Boston to apply for a job.

Krisam Group celebrated its 35th anniversary this year.  Tell us how it all began. 

In the late ‘60’s and early ‘70’s, I worked for Fairmont Hotels.  In those days there were only a couple of hotel representative companies and none were very good at the meetings business.  Independent hotels like Fairmont hired hotel reps to handle their individual reservations, but when they started to dabble in group business, they were just awful.  Marriott, which at the time was a pretty small company, was one of the first to open up regional offices.  I used their example and did the same thing for Fairmont. 

My boss, Richard Swig, gave me total authority (as a twenty-seven year old kid) to open up regional offices for Fairmont.  The idea was simple.  Put top people in the key markets to build personal relationships with major clients to book conventions into Fairmont hotels.  The offices produced results quickly and, by 1975, I decided, if I could do it for someone else, I could do it for myself.

That year, I opened three offices for Krisam Group in New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C.  It was groundbreaking for an independent rep to handle only meetings business.  We started with 5 hotel clients.  One of them was the Doral Country Club which, after 35 years, is still with us.  That formula worked well and today we have 250 hotels.

In the past 35 years, what changes have been the most significant?

The way we do business today is nothing like we did 35 years ago.  The idiomatic expression, “just with a handshake,” was really true. 

Personal relationships were paramount.  A contract that consisted of over three paragraphs was long.  It was easier to do business back then because you had fewer hotels and an enormous number of both association and corporate clients.  And, it was so much more fun.

Now, it’s a very serious, competitive business and trying to stay one step ahead of your competition is not as easy as it used to be.

Can you recall one meeting that had a major impact on your career?

In 1969, Fairmont opened its new hotel in Dallas.  Believe it or not, the Kennedy assassination in 1963 still had a negative impact on meeting planners and Dallas was nowhere near the great city it is today.  Swig allowed me to do almost anything that I could to put his new hotel on the map.

In those days, the Convention Liaison Council (now known as the Convention Industry Council) was what many considered to be the “United Nations” of the meetings and hotel business.  We lined up a meeting with CLC and presented an idea for a new meeting.  I called it an open forum – bring their constituencies together and have a transparent, open meeting about the meetings industry.

They bought the idea and we put on a ground-breaking, four-day event that attracted about 900 people.  Everybody paid, including the presidents of associations, the top brass from ASAE, PCMA and the hotel associations.  The excitement for me was not only that I pulled this off and put the Fairmont Dallas on the map, but we got lots of publicity which made it much easier to promote Dallas as a meetings destination.

Mr. Swig taught me about leadership.  He never talked about budgets but always said, “Chris, if you’re going to do it, make sure it’s first class.”

What is the current and future state of this industry?

I am “cautiously optimistic” about our business in 2010 and more optimistic in ’11 and ’12.  I have regular conversations with major hotel company presidents and they pretty much agree. 

Having said that, we were all doing extremely well up until the start of the recession, which most people expected to be a typical one.  And then, politically, Osama’s statements about the “AIG effect,” where any company receiving TARP funds would be penalized if they met at resorts or cities like Las Vegas, absolutely destroyed the meetings industry.

Financially, CEOs were quick to knock meetings off their line items.  Even if there was a penalty involved, they were willing to cancel the meeting and save that money.  Even companies that have continued to do relatively well would not hold meetings because of the “perception” in the marketplace.

We’re no different than a lot of other companies that could have easily gone under.  We cut, we cut and we cut – then, all of a sudden, things started to turn.  Companies that live and die by motivating their sales forces decided to get back to booking sales meetings and incentives.

Bookings for Krisam Group for the month of June were back and even higher than ’07 and ’08 levels.  The big difference is that everything is now short term, even large groups.  Almost 50 percent of our business is booked and operated within the same month.  It’s unheard of.

What can we do to help ensure the success of this industry?

I don’t think the hotel industry does an effective job competing against other industries for top-flight college kids graduating from non-hotel schools.  If we joined forces and acquainted more young people with the opportunities for a career in our business, we would attract more and better people, which would help ensure the long-term success of this great industry.  

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