Characteristics of a Meeting Planner

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

This is an exploratory research project about meeting planning professionals. Survey responses were collected from 288 meeting professionals in an Internet based survey. The results found a significant difference in perception of minority representation in the industry. The study also found that career counselors are not making students in high school or college aware of meeting planning as a profession, so therefore, they are not studying it in college. People instead are finding out about it in nontraditional ways, such as learning on the job, friends and co-workers. As a result, top skills listed that are needed to succeed included personality or character traits rather than skills that could be learned.