Most meeting professionals foresee improving business conditions in 2014 compared with last year, and most project this year's meeting budgets to at least hold steady, according to a Meeting Professionals International survey released last week. However, the number of respondents who project higher meeting attendance has slipped since a similar survey released a few months ago.
In MPI's second-quarter Meetings Outlook survey of 200 meeting professionals, questioned in March by research firm Association Insights, 43 percent predict budgetary increases in 2014, with 16 percent predicting decreases. This is not too far off from MPI's prior Meetings Outlook survey, released in February, in which 45 percent of respondents predicted budget increases, and 15 percent expected decreases.
Most respondents indicated that the outlook for meetings this upcoming year is good. Seventy-three percent predict better business conditions in 2014 than in 2013, compared with 72 percent in the winter edition who responded similarly, and 13 percent predicted no significant change. However, the number of respondents predicting worse business conditions increased since February, to 14 percent from 8 percent.
More than half of respondents, 53 percent, expect in-person attendance to increase this year from 2013, a drop from the 66 percent who predicted an increase in February. Fourteen percent in the most recent survey predicted a decrease in attendance, compared with 6 percent who predicted a decrease in the winter report.
Respondents in the spring edition of the survey generally don't project meeting lead times to get any longer. Fifty-two percent expect to see shorter lead times in 2014 than in 2013, an increase from 46 percent in the first quarter, while 30 percent don't predict any fluctuation in lead times, similar to the 29 percent who expected no change in the first quarter. The number of meeting professionals predicting longer lead times has decreased to 17 percent from 25 percent in February.
Meanwhile, according to the report, 51 percent of respondents indicated their organizations use virtual and hybrid technology to enhance in-person meetings or incorporate onsite and remote meetings elements, with 9 percent using virtual technology to replace face-to-face meetings altogether. Of the respondents, 66 percent expect an increase in virtual attendance this year from last year, and 5 percent anticipate a decrease.