There’s a Boom in Smaller Meetings and Events

22.08.2024 - 23:42 / skift.com

Thousands of companies have traded in their big office spaces in favor of remote work. But team building is tough on Zoom and many are organizing regular in-person gatherings to bring employees together. 

That shift has a growing number of travel managers and hotels revamping their offerings to cater to this new kind of business travel. 

Reed & Mackay is one such company. The 62-year-old travel management firm recently doubled its meetings and events staff to address growing demand for offsite internal events. 

“That’s been a big surge from our client base, as well as just in the industry in general,” said DeAnne Dale, who oversees sales for North America at UK-based Reed & Mackay. 

That surge has translated to a boost in revenue and an increase in global staff, as well as the acquisition of three new companies with expertise in meetings and events. Clients are doubling or tripling the number of gatherings they hold yearly and reorganizing how they operate in light of new trends, Dale said.

While business travel might have been handled by a travel manager in human resources, meetings and events were often organized by administrative assistants. Potential synergies and savings were often being left on the table. 

When lumping all travel and meetings together, companies can get better rates for general business travel and see savings of 15% to 20% on meetings, said Tim Wagner, senior vice president of consulting services at travel management tech platform HRS. Companies get better pricing from scale and travel suppliers get more business.  

Grant Caplan, president at travel consulting firm Procurigence, said he has one client who booked 8,000 rooms at a single hotel for one year alone but company meetings weren’t included during negotiations.

“You can imagine that hotelier was interested in my client’s business,” Caplan said. “When we went back and said, ‘Well, how about we also throw in some meetings,’ they were hungry enough for the 8,000 that they were glad to make some room on the meeting side to honor our transient room rate for those meetings.” 

While Dale expects regular business travel to remain at about 80% of pre-pandemic levels, demand for meetings is expected to stay strong. 

“Larger meetings and events, side incentive trips, the partner conferences, things like that, have doubled in volume,” Dale said. 

The recent State of Travel report from Skift Research noted that the Meetings industry is set for strong growth through 2032.

Hoteliers have noticed. 

Employees aren’t seeing each other five days a week, and companies “are seeking to do more retreats or employee off sites or team meetings, and we’ve seen a significant rise in that,” Frank Passanante, senior vice president at Hilton, said in