The corporate meetings segment has experienced an upheaval in the last five years due to the massively disruptive shift to remote work—perhaps a trend that is reversing?— inflation, an abrupt DEI sea change and younger generations entering, and Baby Boomers exiting, the stage.
And who can even predict the impact AI will have on everything that touches both the business world and our everyday lives?
While challenges persist—and the impact of the seesaw tariff wars and a possible recession certainly remain major unknowns—good news is afoot, according to major industry studies published in the last six months.
[Related: Top Takeaways and Planner Insights From the 2025 Meetings Today Trends Survey]
Global Business Travel Association
One of the leading sources for intelligence on global business events is Global Business Travel Association (GBTA), which issued its 35th annual 2025 Industry Outlook and Priorities poll in November 2024, featuring 900 respondents.
“GBTA’s findings illustrate an industry at a pivotal point,” said Suzanne Neufang, CEO of GBTA, in a statement accompanying the release of the study. “Business travel is more than rebounding, it’s transforming—driven by the need to manage costs and risk, ensure strong traveler productivity and experience and drive responsible growth.”
[Related: How Meetings May be Impacted by the Growing Return-to-Office Trend]
Highlights of the poll include the following:
- 67% of respondents were either optimistic or very optimistic regarding the outlook overall for the business travel industry, with only 6% pessimistic.
- Buyers were also optimistic/very optimistic, with 71% of travel purchasers responding as such; 62% of suppliers indicated the same optimism.
- In-person meetings are continuing their comeback, with 59% responding they are seeing a lot more/somewhat more employees attending meetings and conferences.
- In North America, 26% of respondents indicated sales-related meetings were the primary reason for travel, followed by internal company meetings (19%), conferences and tradeshows (17%), service trips (11%), training/development (11%) and supplier meetings (7%).
- 52% of buyers expect their travel budgets/spending to be higher/significantly higher in 2025 when compared to 2024; this optimism was expressed in all four regions covered by the poll; 74% of buyers indicated, however, that rising travel costs and budgets not keeping pace were their top barrier.
- Travel buyers believed that easing travel costs and steady budgets (48%) was the factor most buoying the industry, followed by new technology (46%), an improving economy and inflation reduction (41%), and increased travel confidence/requests for more travel (37%).
- Almost half of business travel professionals (44%) indicated they are excited that AI will act as an innovation driver and only 17% were wary; 23% said it was too early to say and 10% were very concerned about privacy, ethics and other concerns.
[Related: Tariff Talk With Voices in Advocacy's Roger Rickard]
Amex GBT
Another authoritative source of business travel intelligence, American Express Global Business Travel (Amex GBT) published its 2024-2025 Meetings & Events Forecast late last year, with findings pointing to a meetings and events industry that continues to flourish despite growing concerns over costs.
The Forecast, which tapped the opinions of more than 500 respondents, found that 66% of meetings and events professionals expect their meetings spend to increase in 2025 and 74% are optimistic about the health of the industry, which was down from the 82% who indicated the same in the 2024 survey.
Amex GBT believes technology will be a critical enabler of increased meetings in 2025, with the Forecast showing 50% of respondents selecting AI and mobile apps as the primary focus for meeting professionals. Respondents noted AI is or will be used for matchmaking attendees/sponsors (42%), creating content (41%), developing creative themes for meetings and events (40%), and tracking attendee engagement (39%).
BCD Meetings & Events
Charlene Rabideau, SVP and North America managing director for BCD Meetings & Events, a global full-service events company, joined a growing chorus of industry leaders who are excited about the possibilities of AI integration:
- Personalized agendas: AI tailors agendas to match participant preferences and past data, making discussions more relevant.
- Sourcing venues/offsites and activities: AI can provide an updated short list and customizing based on attendee type, group size and interest. Pulling high-level average destination costs can reduce sourcing destinations that are outside of the budget.
- Enhanced engagement: AI enables interactive features like polls and Q&A sessions, keeping participants engaged and collecting valuable insights.
Addressing the elephant in the room—increased costs and inflation— Rabideau offered the following advice for corporate planners.
“Prices continue to climb but budgets have remained flat this past year,” she said. “Our sourcing and planning teams need to get more creative in sourcing venues, meal planning and overall budget management. Suggestions may include decreasing the meeting by a day, a more regional or local destination, etc. Shorter lead times are also demanding increased agility, flexibility and efficiency to deliver engaging experiences within budget.”
Two other trends impacting corporate meetings this year include personalization and return-to-office initiatives.
“Program and agenda personalization was a hot trend for 2024 and one we see continuing for 2025,” she said. “Allow for later starts or longer breaks based on attendee type, for example. Choose-your-own adventures for free time or activities remain important for attendees to feel heard and valued at internal meetings. Highly personalized event design will be based on comprehensive pre-event surveys.”
A wildcard in all of this is return-to-office initiatives, with many corporations mandating employees work from the office more.
“With more employees back in the office a few days a week, there is less need for meetings to focus on teambuilding/relationship building in a forced way,” she noted. “Incorporating CSR initiatives where team members can give back locally or work together will continue to be trends.”
Meetings Today Trends Survey
Tapping into our own Meetings Today Trends Survey, which featured responses from 123 corporate planners out of a total of 517, some of the most interesting corporate planner responses included the following:
- While cost registered as the top concern of nearly 73% of respondents when it came to factors impacting their destination and venue decision-making process, alignment with organizational values (32%) and diversity and inclusion (19%) came in as the No. 2 and 3 concerns, respectively.
- The presence of labor union contracts or actions in a venue or destination was listed as a deciding factor in selection by only 36% of respondents.
- The biggest challenges they foresaw in the coming year included increasing costs (70%), lower budget (31%), internal staffing levels (28%) and room block issues (23%). Declining attendance was listed as the most challenging issue by only 20%.
- Compensation (44%) was listed as the greatest threat to growing the career of corporate planners, followed by downsizing (34%) and the perceived value of their profession (33%).
- While the polarized political environment in the U.S. may have tensions running high, only 22% of respondents noted it greatly influences their destination selection, but 47% said it is somewhat of an influence and 32% said it has no influence on destination selection at all.
