Meeting planners have limited time to get their jobs done. And, if they can’t find outside space quickly enough, they just may hold their meetings at corporate headquarters. Hotels can keep the business if they’re prepared to help meeting planners hit their deadlines, says Mike Mason, ZEO and founder of Winter Garden, Florida-based, technology startup Zentila.

Mason’s company recently commissioned Y Partnership to survey 150 meeting planners about meetings of three days or more, requiring at least 15 rooms.

The survey noted that the average booking window for off-site meetings is 36.7 days. And, that may be generous. The same meeting planners defined their short-term planning window as 13 days or less. While that sounds challenging, these planners say more than half their 15.7 annual meetings — 9.4 per year — took less than two weeks time from request to reality.

That’s little time to do a lot of work. The challenge becomes more apparent as 73 percent of those surveyed say the first two to five of those days are used to find the right space. Sure the planning time is shorter, but the process — from hotel selection to food and beverage decisions — remains the same.

And, according to the survey, meeting planners don’t anticipate the return to longer planning windows.

“From a corporate point, I think, this is a permanent shift,” says Mason, a 25-year industry veteran. “Decisions for meetings are being made at the last minute. Many are ad-hoc, off-budget. Corporations are struggling to control this piece of the meetings business. They don’t want to spend the money unless they have to and they don’t make that decision until the last minute.”

“It’s up to the hotel community to come up with a better way to address this incredibly shrinking window,” says Mason. “They need to look at the way meeting planners do business and ask ‘Is there a way we can facilitate a much smoother process.’”

“How can hotels help eliminate the back and forth discussion, how can they make this a streamlined process,” he asks in a call to action. “I believe they’re [hotel operators] aware of it and working hard to figure it out. They’re already looking to shrink down the size of a contract and give the sales person more authority.”

Sometimes the need for speed trumps other buying criteria. While relationships are still important, for example, planners are more willing to try unknown properties or even more upscale venues to meet their schedules, Zentila found.

And, meeting planners are more empowered to sign off on short-term meeting contracts without management approval. That makes things flow more quickly as well.

Zentila just launched an online tool aimed at facilitating short-term meeting planning. For more information visit www.zentila.com.