Celebrating the suppliers who propel the meetings industry forward
Meeting professionals don’t work in a vacuum. Their worlds are filled with energetic supplier-partners who join in on ballroom experiments, leveraging their knowledge and sense of purpose to discover new ways of creating meaningful change for guests and fostering lasting memories.
Each year, we celebrate the exceptionalism of leaders in the destination, hotel, DMC and event tech space who advance the entire industry, their communities and the individual meetings that come into their gravitational pull.
So, drumroll, please. It is with fanfare worthy of a Swedish prize for innovations in meeting science that we announce the winners of the 2024 Catalyst Awards. Nominees were suggested by the Smart Meetings community for the crucial role they played over the last year. Prospective honorees were asked a series of questions to better understand their core beliefs and trajectory. We particularly enjoyed hearing about their motivating forces and career highlights, which you can read below.
Congratulations to these essential partners and thank you for all you do to make the world a little more hospitable.
– JT Long
Just as the sun is fueled by one of the most powerful sources of energy known to humankind, the energy released when this hospitality force of nature gets to work can achieve goals only previously imagined.
In the ups and downs of the hospitality world, these destination leaders raised the bar on what is possible, brought the rest of us along and helped us see a better future.
This designation honors the vitality of hospitality leaders who work tirelessly to welcome our attendees to their properties, serve up innovative spaces and experiences and leave everyone smiling.
At a time when forward motion is at a premium, these partners helped all of us move in the right direction by leading the way. They do the work that moves the needle on KPIs.
Meaningful results require positive energy. These leaders got behind their causes and energized forward progress over the last year.
As meeting professionals adjust to the realities of streaming, hybrid-era audiovisual requirements and tech-enabled everything, these partners emerged to jumpstart the efforts.
This article appears in the November 2024 issue. You can subscribe to the magazine here.
