The Eastside Rooms has revealed the findings from its 2023 Cost of Living Impact Survey.
Overall, 83% of respondents have seen an increase in event costs in the past year, with 45% describing it as “significant”. When broken down, associations/not for profits are feeling the pressure more significantly, with 88% of them seeing an increase versus 73% of corporates.
What the industry is doing
According to the survey, the two different sides of the industry are attempting to mitigate the financial challenges in a number of different ways.
Approximately 51% of associations/not for profits are reducing catering costs at their events. This compares to just 25% of the corporates, who see the biggest opportunity to make savings as a reduction in delegate numbers – 28%.
Another stark difference between the two sides of the market are changes in AV/production costs, where 35% of associations/not for profits are reducing spend compared to just 20% of corporates.
One area where associations/not for profits are making a significant additional change is the amount charged for registration, with 59% increasing fees, this compares to 28% of the corporates (48% across all respondents). The survey also found that 23% of the associations/not for profits are putting registration fees up by more than 10%.
One area where the two sectors do line up is the frequency of events, with both associations/not for profits (29%) and corporate (25%) reducing how often they are holding meetings and conference.
Leanne Bladen, director of sales and marketing, The Eastside Rooms, said: “It’s no surprise that organisers are facing financial challenges is not a surprise. However, we wanted to understand the specific challenges our clients are facing to ensure we are responding and offering the right solutions.
“It is clear from these results that it is not just the organisers that need to think differently as they deliver events but also the venues, caterers and myriad other suppliers in the event sector. Recognising the need to reduce catering and AV/production budgets for example allows us to consider what is reasonable in our proposals as well as what is needed and what is a nice to have.”
*The Eastside Rooms surveyed 125 event professionals in October 2023. Approximately 69% of the respondents were from the UK, 19% from Europe and the remaining 12% from the rest of the world.
