About 40% of corporates do not know how much they spend each year on meetings, Todd Kramer, Carlson Wagonlit Travel's vp events EMEA, said.
Speaking at the Association of Corporate Travel Executives (ACTE) forum in Amsterdam, Mr Kramer said spend on Meetings, Incentives, Conventions and Exhibitions (MICE) could be as much as 25%-40% of a company's total T&E budget.
He said MICE spend was around 1% of a company's revenue. For Fortune 500 companies, this could be between $30m-$80m a year.
Mr Kramer quoted one global electronic company which spent $2bn a year, 2% of its revenue while a major pharmaceutical company spent $80m, 1.1% of its revenue.
He said the MICE market was fragmented and difficult to measure accurately. But it was a market worth $325bn globally and $120bn in Europe.
It was also one that was growing with a 9% increase in events in Europe in 2006.
Mr Kramer said many corporates did not have a meetings and events policy, there were no standards and no data on spend.
It was also an emotional subject with a "high sensitivity" over ownership of events. These could be booked by PAs, secretaries, marketing, HR or sales people. Very often, spend was spread over different budgets.
He advised companies that to make savings and to control spend, a policy and process needed to be put in place.
As a start, Mr Kramer said, companies should study what was being spent and start benchmarking.
Companies had to know how meetings money was being spent, who was spending it, what was the process, whether procurement was involved and what controls were in place.
The next stage was to build a company plan which showed actual spend, a proposed process and potential savings.
Change management might need to be brought in but without taking away the booker's perks. Top management also had to buy in.
He said companies had to ask themselves how their MICE spend fitted in with their transient travel policy and whether and in what areas the two could be consolidated.
Once the "road map" for MICE policy was in place, he said that quick wins, like simplifying processes could be implemented.
Further on, data consolidation could help select preferred suppliers, there could be extra leverage in negotiations and compliance could be better enforced.
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