While 2022 bookings lag 2019 bookings by 30%, sales leads are approaching 2019 levels in the first half of 2022, according to a new quarterly sales report issued by Simpleview revealing booking data compiled from its 215 DMO clients.
The report, released in late July, is the first in a series of quarterly reports that will be issued by Simpleview. The goal of the quarterly reports is to illustrate how leads and booking patterns for meetings and events have changed since the pandemic period began in 2019.
[Related: Recovery on Pace: "Shimo" Shimasaki on the Pace of Meetings Bookings]
Highlights of the inaugural report include the following:
- 2022 bookings still lag 2019 bookings by 30%.
- Leads are within 6% of 2019 in the first half of 2022.
- June 2022 had 3% more leads than June 2019.
- There are over 2,300 more hotel leads for July-December 2022 arrivals than for the same period in 2019.
- The No. 1 market is sports, and it has more leads in 2022 than 2019 had for both hotel meetings and convention center events combined.
“Our goal for the Simpleview Sales Quarterly report is to provide DMOs with the information needed to support their sales strategy,” said Christine "Shimo" Shimasaki, managing director at 2Synergize, a consulting company owned by Simpleview, and also a Meetings Today 2022 Meetings Trendsetter. “We want to provide DMOs with tools to educate their local communities and stakeholders about the opportunities and challenges of our industry’s recovery.”
[Related: 2022 Meetings Trendsetters]
The next Simpleview Sales Quarterly report will be released in fall 2022. The reports aggregate Simpleview CRM data from 2015 DMOs in Canada and the U.S. that generated 50 or more leads in 2019 and had leads each year from 2019-2022. The report excludes events with fewer than 10 rooms on peak.
What the Numbers Mean
Contextual highlights from the inaugural report include the following:
- DMOs have made substantial progress in terms of sales leads in the first six months of 2022, finishing the period only 6% behind the same time period in 2019, which is considered somewhat of a baseline year in determining recovery from the pandemic.
- In Q2 of 2022, DMO leads trailed the same time period in 2019 by a mere 1.8%.
- June 2022 sales leads registered 103% of the June 2019 index.
- Lead room nights in the second quarter of 2022 trailed 2019 numbers by 10.4%, which indicates smaller-sized events, according to Simpleview’s analysis.
- While bookings in the first half of 2022 were only 70% of 2019 numbers, the first half of 2022 was up 77% compared to the same period in 2021, during the height of the pandemic shutdown. Booked room nights are 33% higher during the same time period when comparing 2022 and 2021 numbers.
- The average number of peak rooms for booked convention center events dropped 14% in the first half of 2022 when compared to the same time period in 2019, with attendance down 9.5% compared to 2019 and the average number of peak rooms booked for hotel meetings relatively flat.
Pipeline Health, Event Cycles and Key Markets
According to the inaugural report, there were 5.9% fewer leads, 9.7% fewer room nights and 7.9% less attendance through the first half of 2022 when compared to the same time period in 2019.
Other highlights include the following:
- A 9.9% drop in lead attendance from 2019 numbers can be attributed to a large number of mega-events in the pipeline in 2019, with more than 80 hotel meetings with 75,000 attendees or greater in 2019, compared to 43 events of that size in 2022.
- Average peak room leads in the pipeline for the first six months of 2021 when compared to 2019 have not changed significantly when averaged across the four DMO categories used by Simpleview, with the largest category (500,000 gross square feet of exhibit space) up 4.2% and the second-largest category (100,000-499,000 gross square feet of exhibit space) down 3.6%.
- Event booking cycles (lead creation date to the meeting start date) have become more short-term, with first-half 2022 cycles an average of three months shorter than in 2019.
- More than 2,300 additional hotel meeting leads are in the pipeline for the last six months of 2022 compared to the same time period in 2019.
- Sports meetings were at the top of the Top 10 market segments in terms of hotel meeting lead percentage variance in the first six months of 2022 when compared to 2019, with 4% more leads. This was followed by Pharma/Medical (1% more) and SMERF (-20%).
- Sports meetings also fared well in the convention center event leads Top 10 segments results, coming in at 10.8% more than in the first six months of 2019. The No. 2 market, Education, however, tumbled 33.5% and Pharma/Medical fell 19.5%.
Download the full report: Simpleview Sales Quarterly Report.
