As the pandemic drags on for its third year, the meetings and events industry is still working to get back to pre-pandemic business levels, but it’s getting closer and closer to that goal. IACC recently released its Meeting Room of the Future Spring 2022 Barometer Report, which included a survey of 87 venue operators across the Americas, Europe, and Australia and provides a picture of the state of recovery of the meetings sector around the world.
“Indicators show the level of business events being held globally, such as conferences and meetings, are still very much in recovery mode but there is also reason for optimism on the industry’s return to ‘business as usual,’” reads the report.
Perhaps most promising is that globally, respondents project that their average revenue in 2022 will be just 8 percent lower than it was in 2019, whereas revenues in 2021 were on average 45 percent lower than 2019 levels. In Australia and Denmark, in particular, meeting revenue is expected to outpace 2019 levels in 2022.
Interestingly, for all the virtual innovation over the past few years, the comeback of in-person events seems to be happening at the expense of virtual options — 30 percent of respondents in 2021 indicated that over 90 percent of their live meetings and events had a virtual component, but that percentage has dropped to 19 percent in 2022.
However, venues have invested in their technology offerings over the past two years to support virtual and hybrid events, with 32 percent globally having made a major investment and 49 percent having made at least some investment.
When it comes to staffing shortages, which have been hindering the industry’s recovery during the pandemic, most venues (55 percent) have already returned or expect to return to full staffing levels by the end of the year. An additional 27 percent expect to get back to normal in this regard in 2023. Similarly, the majority of respondents do not expect staff shortages or supply chain issues to impact their service through the rest of 2022.