The meet market.

• Position: Booking more meeting business in hotels and convention centers - Special Advertising Section: 1990 Meeting and Convention Guide

How to book more meeting business? Be unconventional, say our panelists.

When Eleanor Upton plans a meeting or convention, sometimes it's not just a matter of a finding a good facility in a desirable city. These days, many meeting groups demand everything from high-tech audio-visual equipment so they can dress up their presentations to day care so they can bring the kids along and stretch a business trip into a vacation.

"Day care is coming on strong," says the president of Upton Associates, a Raleigh-based meeting and convention planner. It's the new thing, especially among professional groups. I work with one group, the N.C. Podiatric Medical Society, and 1 0 to 12 of their members are husbands and wives who practice together. So if they're in a meeting all day, someone has to take care of the children."

The kids aren't automatically left at home anymore when Mom, Dad or both attend a convention, agrees Herman von Treskow, president and general manager of the Grove Park Inn and Country Club in Asheville. Groups "are much more family oriented," he says. "Vacations are combined with business. A businessman will take his family on a business trip and tack on a day at the front and end of the trip."

Trends in the meeting and convention industry was just one topic addressed by Upton, von Treskow and three other travel and tourism executives who spoke with BUSINESS NORTH CAROLINA. They praised the work of the North Carolina Division of Travel & Tourism but complained that North Carolina is losing out to neighboring states - its main competition in the quest for meetings and conventions.

Even though North Carolina's travel industry as grown 144 percent over the past decade, its market share in the Southeast has barely held steady, dropping slightly from 11.7 percent in 1984 to 11.25 percent in 1988, according to an April 1990 marketing report by Travel & Tourism.

The division's budget, the report says, has grown 167 percent over the past 10 years, but it has declined in relation to neighboring states' travel-promotion spending, falling from 20 percent of the region's total in 1979 to 13 percent last year.

For North Carolina to compete in the '90s, the executives say, more tax money is needed to boost travel and tourism. Industry officials must continue cooperative efforts to promote the state, and communities must use direct sales to land conventions and meetings.

"Those who have strong direct sales are winning the battle," says Dick Trammell, executive director of...