Changes to venue cancellation charges to benefit clients are now commonplace, according to the Pathfinder trends and status report from the Meetings Industry Association (MIA).
The MIA Pathfinder survey, sponsored by Confex Group, has been published quarterly since 2008 as a snapshot of trading conditions in the meetings and events industry.
With budgets under constant review and client companies often needing to change their plans at short notice, MIA Pathfinder reveals an industry under pressure from buyers to ease cancellation charges. In the past three years almost two-thirds of venues have been prepared to change cancellation charges in order to meet clients’ needs, the report claims.
Jane Longhurst, MIA Chief Executive, described some of the findings as “surprising”.
“We work closely with venues in order to assist them in achieving the Accredited in Meetings (AIM) accreditation and, therefore, have a good understanding of the pressures they are facing, but the results revealed by Pathfinder can still be surprising. This time, as well as the large degree of change in the approach to cancellation charges, we have discovered certain venues have achieved significant growth in event numbers, even since the start of the downturn in 2008,” she said.
Annual Growth since 2009 is above 10 per cent for a quarter of venues, according to the new report, which asked respondents to compare, for the first time, annual like-for-like growth based on the number of events held.
Despite the economic instability, the MIA Pathfinder reveals that over 50 per cent of respondents have experienced growth in the number of events held at their venue each year and, for around a quarter of all respondents, this growth was greater than 10 per cent.
The report sampled 145 respondents, representing a split of 51 per cent venues, 19.3 per cent buyers, 16.5 per cent agents, 7.6 per cent destinations and 5.5 per cent suppliers.
MIA Pathfinder is free to MIA members and available at £125 plus VAT for non-members.
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