Meeting planners are looking to deliver more bespoke and personalized experiences to attendees, while struggling to manage tighter budgets and sustainability goals, according to a new report.

What’s Trending 2025, a report published earlier this month by the events management firm BCD Meetings & Events, emphasized the importance of personalization in meetings design. “Personalization, immersive experiences and engaging event design are increasingly driving event strategy globally,” said the report “It’s become essential to capture the attention of attendees and demonstrate the clear impact of events.”

Flights are the most expensive piece and the biggest carbon-savings opportunity.

Charlene Rabideau, BCD Meetings & Events

That means planners will need to be creative about their agendas, said Charlene Rabideau, SVP and Managing Director for North America at BCD. That can mean personalized gifts for attendees, as well as more opportunities to experience a host city. “For one client event, we added longer breaks to allow for more networking time where they could go outside and do an activity, as opposed to a typical 30-minute break,” she said. “It’s about being more intentional about the agenda design to ensure that it’s allowing for the networking piece as well as the content and education pieces.”

“Know the right questions to ask as people are registering for your event,” the report advised. “When handled strategically, this allows  for greater personalization and attendees feeling like they have a choice, but in a controlled way without breaking the budget.”

The report notes that planners are also mindful about the length of events, and how an event can be adjusted to meet sustainability goals. “Costs are going up, yet budgets often remain flat,” the report says. “Manage costs in a smart way by understanding the types of meetings and events you are managing across the enterprise — think size, spend, activity, number of meetings — so you can influence where your investment is going on a continual basis.”

Rabideau adds that many planners are paying closer attention to where likely attendees will hail from to help reduce the carbon usage related to an event. “Flights are the most expensive piece and the biggest carbon-savings opportunity,” Rabideau said. “So look at that piece first: Who needs to be there, in what place? You might host a meeting on the West Coast for the West Coast attendees, and the East Coast for the East Coast.”

That understanding is just one piece of a broader need for increased data savvy, according to the report. “Implement a data policy and understand what your meetings activity and spend looks like through data so you can manage it effectively and use it in negotiations with suppliers,” the report says. “Be able to demonstrate you can control spend and influence behavior to drive better partnerships and relationships across the supply chain base for meetings and events.”

Despite that increased consideration around data, sustainability, and use of technology around meetings, enthusiasm around hybrid or virtual events has waned as planners look to trim costs, Rabideau said. “We’ve watched a steady trend downward to the number of hybrid meetings because of the cost and because of the expense associated,” she said.

[dusanpetkovic/istock]