Hospitality industry expert Bjorn Hanson, dean of New York University’s Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism and Sports, outlined the five major challenges he expects meeting planners will face in 2014.
- More revenue management and yield management applied to meeting rooms and food and beverage pricing. This has been an industry practice that’s been emerging, but it will be accelerated in 2014.
- Upgrades, through outsourcing, of audiovisual. As more and more hotels are using outside services, the outside services are resulting in price increases because the hotels are receiving between 30 percent and 50 percent of what the sponsor of the meeting event is paying, but the equipment and service is better.
- Facility upgrades. There will be a record amount of renovations experienced by the event and conference managers in the hotels.
- Higher prices. As occupancy is returning to recent peak levels it is causing hotels to focus on building room rate during their more high-occupancy periods—high occupancy days of the week—which means that meeting planners have to be extra flexible to avoid the largest of room rate increases.
- Challenges with availability. Because of higher demand (occupancy), there will be less availability, so flexibility again will be really important.
