MPI’s quarterly state of the meetings report, Meetings Outlook, has been released; and if you had to sum up Q1 2025 in a word or two, it would be “face off.”
As MPI Meetings Outlook Q1 celebrates the strong comeback of in-person meetings, positive prospects among planners—76 percent expect favorable live attendance this year—are facing off with fiscal realities and political uncertainty.
In fact, declining budgets are a frequently cited concern, with 90 percent of respondents either “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” about costs outpacing budgets in 2025 as survey data indicated cost increases hitting many meeting professionals. Planners put F&B and A/V at the top of the price hikes—over 10 percent more than the year before—followed by transportation, accommodations, staffing, meeting space, marketing and swag.
The fallout from rising prices includes everything from vendors demanding 100 percent payment up front to events postponing expensive, innovative ideas and making undesirable compromises when it comes to venues. As one planner noted, “budgets are staying fairly stagnant, but venue costs are continuing to rise dramatically, forcing us to decrease quality… [and] slowly decreasing the number of attendees.”
Planners also cited economic and political uncertainties impacting not just costs but whether or not to hold events at all, with one planner saying their nonprofit clients were holding back on committing to new in-person live events for 2025 until they see how the threat of tariffs and funding cutoffs shake out.
Ultimately, planners and some vendors said, success in 2025 may come down to creativity in presentation, smart sourcing, and frugality that doesn’t hurt quality.
“It’s marketing 101,” one planner said. “Create experiences that people will walk away from and say ‘…that was two days well spent.'”
See the full report here.
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