The U.S. Travel Association is launching “Travel Effect,” a multiyear, multimillion-dollar advocacy and awareness campaign to establish the link between travel and its effect on relationships, education, business and communities .

“What we’ve long known anecdotally, we will now prove through authoritative research: travel has a positive effect on health, relationships, business performance and the well-being of communities,” said Roger Dow, president and CEO of the U.S. Travel Association. “Travel Effect will take new research and drive earned media to communicate travel’s benefits to the U.S. economy, to local communities, and to good health, strong families and an improved quality of life.”

At Travel Effect’s core are research projects and studies that will demonstrate the indispensable benefits travel brings to people’s lives, their careers and their communities. Current research underway examines travel’s effect on relationships and its power to create lasting memories for children and adults. Additional projects include measuring the bottom-line impact of business travel and the impact of government meetings on government operations, private-sector development and local communities.

The campaign will employ both earned and paid media to convey research findings, with an emphasis on social media. Research findings and more information will be available at www.traveleffect.com. Additionally, state and district data that provide key travel impact measurements formerly available on poweroftravel.org will be on the Travel Effect website.

Travel Effect’s first research project of 2013, a study on the effect travel has on relationships, will be released in February.

Suppliers can improve the sales process by researching their planner audience, listening to them and planning a strategy to change their approach before they make the sales call and then build on it as they continue the relationship.

This is according to Mike Pusateri and Jonathan Gray with Vantage Strategy, who presented findings of the buyer/seller relationships study sponsored by the MPI Foundation at IMEX America today.

The study looked at how different people want to be communicated to, and much like target groups in consumer marketing surveys, Vantage decided it could approach meeting planners the same way. 

From the supplier side, though, there is not one type of sales person. Working on communication strategies is key, as is getting fundamentals right by learning how to better meet planners' needs.  

Look for the full results of this study on MPIweb.org in November. In the meantime, view the video below to learn more about the five types of meeting planner personas.