Meeting and Event Planners

Knowland released our annual Meeting Planner Survey in conjunction with ConferenceDirect. The report revealed key insights and challenges facing meeting planners today. If you are a hotel owner, manager, or sales leader, you may want to consider the challenges facing meeting planners as they look to book groups at hotel venues.

If you didn’t get a chance to download the survey, you can do that here.

Here are some key highlights you should consider ahead of the spring season.

1. Nearly 50% of planners report costs as the main area of dissatisfaction. Without question, planners have greatest dissatisfaction with continued high Costs. Pressures to deliver high-quality events within budget are misaligned with rising prices. The need to cut costs lead to changes such as shortening meeting duration, alternative destinations, fewer/lower cost activities and F&B, and overall limited attendee experience. And while staffing levels and experience have improved, over 30% of planners identify this as a top area of dissatisfaction.
2. Alternative destinations and a shift to secondary markets. Destination and venue are two areas that companies are looking at to manage the cost of meetings. Groups are more likely to move events to secondary markets while maintaining the quality and/or status of their event venue by not moving down in chain scale. This is a big opportunity for secondary and tertiary markets to attract new business based on offering quality products, services, and attractive pricing alternatives compared to the top 25 market destinations.
3. AI and sustainability are on the radar but not influencing strategy. AI plays an increasing role in the meetings industry. Planners see opportunities for AI in expected uses, such as event mobile apps and virtual assistants. Yet, there is less excitement for AI in daily operations or game-changing digital applications, at least for now. And while sustainability is a top-of-mind issue, it has not yet made it into the KPIs of meeting organizers.
4. Sustainability is a hot topic, or is it? It looks like the meetings industry will need to up its game in the coming year. Although 35% of planners say groups have some level of protocol, almost 50% say their meetings do not have sustainability requirements. This is a big opportunity for hotels to step up by providing sustainability standards promoted for all events that go beyond the basics, such as recycling and exclusion of single-serve utensils.

Knowland data is designed to ensure sales leaders have the tools they need to better target and influence meeting planners. Shift to an account-based sales strategy where sales teams source new group business directly with the account. Using Knowland, sales teams identify their best-fit prospecting shortlist using an AI-powered database of hosted events Learn more here.