According to the American Express Meetings & Events 2015 Global Meetings Forecast (“the Forecast”), European meeting planners will need to focus on “doing more with less” in the year ahead and budgets are reflective of this. In addition, meetings activity predictions from European survey respondents generally mirror the economic situation of individual countries in 2014.
Across Europe, minor activity increases are predicted in most meeting types in 2015 and while meetings budgets across Europe are predicted to experience small declines of 0.4%, this is an improvement over the 1.9% decline predicted for 2014. However, the number of meeting attendees is expected to decline in the year ahead.
Spain is seeing the most positive recovery and is expected to see large increases in both meeting activity and length of meeting. However, the United Kingdom and Germany, which were predicted to see large increases in 2014, have more modest predictions for 2015.
“The economies of individual European countries are in varied stages of recovery, which is reflected in the state of the meetings and events industries across the continent. While overall budget and individual meetings spend declines are predicted to be smaller in magnitude than in 2014, meeting owners in Europe are feeling the pressure to get creative and optimise their meetings budgets as much as possible. They are expected to deliver the same quality of experience as in previous years, despite hotel and air rates continuing to rise,” said José Antonio Ruiz, Director, EMEA, American Express Meetings & Events.
“For American Express Meetings & Events, the last twelve months have been about responding to the specific needs of our European customers and helping them to deliver meetings and events that align with their corporate priorities – whether this be helping them to understand how they can maximise their meeting spend, or how they can introduce technologies that enhance the overall meetings experience. We look forward to working with our clients in the year ahead and continuing to add value and helping them to evolve their meetings programmes.”
Technology is playing an increasing role in events and meeting planners in Europe, particularly in Spain and France, are driving experimentation with newer and diverse technology. Event planners are offering everything from social media to connect attendees, to tablets to facilitate interaction with speakers or hosts. The pressure to innovate is leading to the development of meeting-specific apps in some countries. However, virtual meetings is yet to capture the hearts of meeting owners in Europe with 15% of those surveyed citing that virtual and hybrid meetings are not viable alternatives to live meetings.
