Meeting expectations: communities roll out the red carpet for business gatherings, ensuring economic benefits continue past their adjournment.

• Author: Lea, Amanda
• Position: SPONSORED SECTION: CORPORATE TRAVEL AND MEETING GUIDE

In-person meetings seem to be an endangered species in the internet age. Broadband connections and video streaming, for example, allow virtual meetings and webinars to be held anytime between parties anywhere in the world. But not everyone is online with the changes, says Rich Phaneuf, executive director and CEO of Raleigh-based Association Executives of North Carolina. "We recently did a survey asking our members their favorite way to receive educational information, and the results showed that face-to-face interaction is preferred."

North Carolina is a popular destination for meetings and conventions: About 39 million domestic overnight trips were taken in North Carolina in 2016, according to Visit North Carolina, the tourism promotion arm of Cary-based Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina Inc. That ranked it sixth in the U.S., while its 9.7 million day trips were the ninth most. Nearly 10% of trips were business-related.

While it's difficult to use dollars and cents to measure the exact economic impact of business meetings and conventions, Greenville-Pitt County Convention and Visitors Bureau Executive Director Andrew Schmidt says the effects are felt in several ways. Executive travel, for example, happens most often on weekdays, which supplements a slow time for hotels and restaurants.

But free for the taking are unique experiences and positive observations, which can reinforce a region's brand and encourage guests to return, often for leisure. "The value of corporate meetings and events is not only 'X', it's more like 'X to a factor of 5,"' Phaneuf says. "It's multiplied by the fact that the effects reverberate beyond what we can encapsulate in one figure. It's hard to measure, but the impact to that community is surely felt, even if the effects are nondirect."

Planners have many reasons to choose North Carolina for their events, and those start with spacious conference centers. Christian Schroeder, Winston-Salem Convention and Visitors Bureau's director of sales and services, says business events have an estimated annual economic impact of about $240 million on Forsyth County. Some assemble around the work done at Wake Forest Innovation Quarter, almost 2 million square feet of offices, labs and classrooms where more than 70 businesses with 3,200 employees and five educational institutions with more than 7,500 students and trainees collaborate in fields from biomedical science to advanced materials. Many also are held at...