Abstract
The position of convention-services manager (CSM) crystallized in its present form in the 1980s, when many hotels focused strongly on the meetings business. The CSM's job is to ensure that meetings and conventions booked at a hotel are successful. Usually that means working across the hotel's departmental lines to achieve the desired result, but sometimes it means toning down the guests' expectations of what the hotel can deliver or even rewriting sales contracts. Although some hotels may accord the CSM position less consideration in the '90s than it had in the '80s, many CSMs have continued to drive toward professional status, including developing a professional association. In what is apparently the first such study of CSMs, the authors discovered what appears to be a division in the CSM ranks. About half of the CSMs studied considered themselves to be professionals and were members of the Association for Convention Operations Management, while the other half appeared to follow the hotel paradigm of viewing the position as a way station on the road to another hotel job or another career.
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