Gary Schirmacher is the senior vice president of Industry Presence & Strategic Development with Experient.
After 30 years in the meetings industry, Gary Schirmacher has witnessed his share of change, and the last few have seen that rate of change accelerate almost beyond comprehension as the “sharing economy” disrupts virtually everything.
Like many others, Schirmacher fell into the industry, beginning in college at Arkansas State University, where he planned his Sigma Pi fraternity’s formals, which morphed into a post-college job as convention coordinator for national Sigma Pi. From there he landed a job at Hyatt before settling in at Conferon in 2006, which became Experient that year and was acquired by Maritz Travel in 2012.
But the sharing economy—think Airbnb, Uber—is the disrupter these days, and a topic he covers in his frequent presentations. For Experient, Airbnb, while not a first option, can fill a need when hotels are sold out.
“A large amount of our business is citywide business, and when there’s no room at the inn no one wants to drive back to the airport,” he said. “So how can this new product that has inventory in bigger cities [fill that need]?”
The three drivers propelling the sharing economy, he said, are technology, cost-savings and its social aspect, which fits in well with the meetings industry.
“For me, if you have an asset, such as content, equipment, or it could be staff, it could possibly be shared,” he said. “There’s two people sitting in a thousand rooms right now, talking and asking, ‘How can we can disrupt this business?’ I don’t want to be the guy that says this is never going to work, because if you think that you’re sorely behind.”
