Meeting planners are still facing rising expenses and looking for creative ways to address them, according to a new report.

The Q3 2024 Meetings & Events Pulse Survey [PDF], released last month, was conducted from July through August by Global DMC Partners, a network of destination management companies, and included responses from meeting professionals from North America and Europe. 

Overall, respondents said they’ve benefited from larger budgets to do their work—39 percent say their budgets have increased in the past year. 

But costs have risen as well, with the preponderance of respondents saying that expenses for venues, food and beverage, AV, ground transportation, and more have increased between 10 to 30 percent in the past two years. That shift appears to have cut into DEI and accessibility efforts on-site: While a majority of planners say they ask attendees about attendees’ needs for additional accommodations always or most of the time, they rarely or only sometimes make use of on-site interpreters, closed captioning, and inclusive programming formats. 

Among the most common tactics used by meeting planners to offset costs, according to the survey, are consolidating the number of events, reducing the number of days of the program, and cutting back on AV expenses.

Global DMC Partners president and CEO Catherine Chaulet said associations are also looking at ways to build leisure experiences into events to attract attendees looking to tack vacation time onto a work trip. “A highly effective strategy has been negotiating preferential rates for pre- or post-event stays, which allows attendees to bring their families or partners,” she said. “On the other hand, programs that are solely focused on education, which could easily be conducted via Zoom, tend to see the greatest decline in participation.”

The report notes that inflexible contracts with hotels and venues are a top challenge: 84 percent of respondents say it is an issue sometimes or most of the time. But Chaulet said meeting planners can still find opportunities to bring down costs. 

“The key lies in identifying strategic opportunities,” she said. “For example, if the program rotates locations, planners can negotiate multi-year contracts within the same hotel brand, offering leverage on rates. Creative approaches to reducing food and beverage costs can also be successful, as long as there’s up-front communication. Additionally, venues tend to be more flexible when planners offer immediate payment in exchange for discounts. Cash remains king and a powerful negotiating tool.”

Meeting planners are also looking for efficiencies via AI, which jumped in use among planners in the past year: While less than a third said they’d used it in 2023, now nearly half say they do. Chatbots like ChatGPT are the most popular AI tool by far, according to the survey, though writing and content-creation tools are often used as well. 

Still, Chaulet said, planners are treading carefully as they figure out how AI can best serve their needs. “Planners are certainly voicing concerns about AI, particularly around information privacy, security, and reliability,” she said. “However, there’s growing interest in AI-driven accessibility tools, which can enhance the attendee experience. As AI continues to evolve, meeting planners are looking at ways it can be used to create more inclusive events while maintaining trust and safeguarding sensitive information.”