EMEA organizers are positive about 2025 but demand more flexibility
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We checked out the Pulse report, a market survey done in the EMEA region by Northstar and Cvent. The question we all have in mind, will there be good business next year, gets a positive answer: no euphoria but a strong market, still growing. But not all is easy, and planners struggle with conditions of the providers, whose flexibility has dropped terribly since the pandemic. Here are the highlights.
The main conclusions of this report from October 2024, are the following:
- Planners are optimistic, with 59% reporting being more optimistic about future success than 6 months ago, while only 19% are more pessimistic. And 56% of EMEA event planners expect to organise more events in 2025, while only 6% expect to organise fewer. The music is not stopping, apparently!
- Face-to-face interactions are more important than ever and events are seen as more valuable than other marketing and sales tools according to 85% of respondents. But then maybe asking this question to meeting planners makes little sense… 🙂
- Satisfaction with hotels is improving, which the authors of the study interpret as hotels having gotten over their staffing issue (something which we seem to observe in Spain too), and they areresponding to RFPs faster. The share of planners saying hotels generally answer RFPs in less than 2 days has increased from 19% to 41%.
- … but flexibility and cost still a pain point. The study says 50% of planners say hotels and venues flexibility is insufficient, 49% that F&B costs are too high, 43% that rooms costs are too high, and 42% that availability is scarce.
- The result is that “budget constraints” still tops the problems of meeting planners, followed by the “higher costs of goods and services”, in front of “hotels and venues service levels”. Doing more with less still seems to be a headache for planners.
So get ready for a demanding 2025: strong activity, and still a need for creativity, negotiation, and some painful choices to fit many events in a still limited budget and with high prices. A good problem, after all, I believe! You can download this report here.
