Around 80m people attended 1.37m meetings and conferences in the UK last year, a drop of 13% on 2006.
A Meetings Industry Report by HBI reveals that despite this, more than 35,000 new meeting rooms will open across the country in the next two years.
And a review of the meetings specialist”s own blue chip clients found that the number of meetings in 2008 looks likely to rise ” 44% of companies said they would hold more this year, 31% predict an increase in attendees and 30% have increased meetings budgets.
”There is some sign of banks being wary because of a possible recession, but that”s really the only market where we”re seeing a down-turn,” said HBI managing director Des Mclaughlin. ”Whether that will filter into the rest of the industry is still unclear, but we”re certainly seeing increased business year on year.
”Even if it filters through [banks” wariness] there”s far more business to be won out there for companies like ours, and we”re predicting a 30% increase this year. Smaller agents will find it harder to hang on to business, but we”re not seeing any great impact at this point in the UK and Europe.”
Just under half of clients said the majority of meetings last just a day, with a further 37% lasting two to three days, and 67% of office workers attend at least one off-site meeting each week.
While 72% of HGI clients used a hotel for a meeting in 2007 and 32% used a specialist Conference and Training Centre, nearly a quarter of clients (21%) said they will use a specialist more often in 2008, and nearly half (47%) companies now are using automated software systems to better take advantage of internal meeting space.
London predictably heads the top ten conference destinations list. According to the Meeting Industry Association”s 2007 survey, 67.7% of companies held events there (up 2.7%), while Manchester and Birmingham both scored 31.3%. Leeds was a new entry in fourth place with 19.3% holding events there.