She said the big draw at the mandatory meeting is the technology and screen visibility. During presentations, quizzes appear on the screen. When a speaker from the National Credit Union Foundation in Madison, Wis., asked what percentage of Americans lived from paycheck to paycheck, participants could check answers they keyed in on their mobile devices with the actual answer on the screen. (The answer is nearly half.)
Ms. Downey said the theater rental is “probably a little cheaper than the hotel, but not a lot.” Conference room rental fees and audiovisual requirements cost a couple of thousand dollars at a hotel, she said. At a movie theater, those fees are included in the rental.
- Christina Panos, chief marketing officer at the Corcoran Group, a real estate company with offices in New York, the Hamptons and Florida, said the company chose the Ziegfeld Theater (now closed) to present a website redesign in November 2012.
The theater setting provided additional motivation. “It’s been home to amazing entertainment,” she said.
While movie theaters are gaining acceptance among meeting planners, they probably will not replace traditional meeting spaces. Mark Cooper, the chief executive of the International Association of Conference Centers, said in an email: “The use of unusual venues for events is not new, but also often offers an environment that has a novelty appeal but lacking the ideal facilities (acoustics, lighting, furniture and technology) required for effective meetings and conferences. They are used more for evening corporate events rather than serious meetings and conferences in my experience.”
But Mr. Jouaneh, the Amex executive, said technology was transforming meetings, allowing planners to adjust content. And he said using theaters allows for a hybrid approach, with a combination of face-to-face meetings and extending meetings to a broader virtual audience.
For Ms. Downey, there may be another reason for the popularity of movie theaters among employees. She said she had received high praise both for the central location and the ease of parking. Parking downtown for the hotel meetings “was a bear and expensive,” she said.
