Planners who participated in PCMA’s 31st Annual Meetings Market Survey face less uncertainty but continuing challenges.
255 association, corporate and independent meetings and events organizers participated in PCMA’s 2024 Meetings Market Survey conducted in late August and early September. The recently released results suggest that while the industry has bounced back and planners feel positive about their jobs, budgetary challenges continue to accelerate.
Survey Takeaways
• Job satisfaction but organizational challenges. Most respondents feel positive about their jobs. But they also reported organizational challenges such as frustration with management and leadership, budget constraints and the stress of managing high workloads with staff shortages.
• Growing attendance. 49 percent of respondents said attendance grew at their largest 2024 in-person meeting, compared to a similar event pre-pandemic, by an average of 17 percent. 60 percent expect attendance to increase in 2025.
•Costs are still rising and budgets aren’t keeping pace. Mounting costs for food & beverage, audiovisual, travel expenses and other necessities continue to go up but most budgets aren’t increasing accordingly. Respondents cited the challenge of delivering high-quality events with reduced financial resources. In last year’s survey, 64 percent of respondents anticipated bigger budgets in 2024 to keep up with rising costs. This year, less than half expect their budgets to increase in 2025 and 39 percent expect their budgets to remain flat. 73 percent expect F&B to be their greatest expense item in 2025 budgets.
• Staffing has not returned to pre-pandemic levels. Planners continue to work with smaller staffs. Respondents are dealing with staff shortages, retention and difficulty in finding qualified team members.
• Resourceful budget solutions. Three out of five planners reported that they are becoming more skilled negotiators; 55 percent are beefing up sponsorship opportunities and 53 percent are selectively cutting back on event expenses that don’t deliver ROI. 51 percent of survey respondents have shifted costs over to attendees by raising registration fees.
•Heightened attendee expectations. Attendees are setting increasingly high bars and expectations for experiential and memorable events that deliver the wow factor.
• Increased use of GenAI. Adoption of artificial intelligence tools has increased from 48 percent last year to 62 percent this year. Planners are using GenAI for content creation, marketing and promotion, brainstorming and idea generation, research and analysis and administrative tasks like budgeting, contract clauses and menu planning.
• Sustainability is becoming a priority. Last year, 31 percent of respondents included sustainability requirements in their RFPs. This year, that number jumped to 60 percent. As well, 42 percent have increased sustainability reporting—internally and/or to attendees— versus 27 percent last year.
• Diversity, equity and inclusion is an ongoing commitment. 66 percent of survey respondents prioritized DEI initiatives at their 2024 events and are committed to being welcoming and inclusive to all. This includes being intentional about hiring diverse suppliers, fine-tuning codes of conduct and choosing more diverse speakers and panelists.
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