Planners are increasingly looking to Asia for events but the region’s attractiveness could wane with ongoing geopolitical and economic challenges. Photo Credit: Adobe Stock/Elmira (AI generated)
The Asia Pacific region experienced one of its busiest years for meetings and events in 2024, with more than 1,200 planner organisations sourcing events in APAC, showing a strong interest in the region.
This is according to data sourced across the APAC region from Cvent’s platform. Its findings, revealed in a recent webinar, show that APAC was clearly the place to be in 2024 for events. The data looked at event trends, growth in terms of room nights and RFPs (requests for proposals).
It remains to be seen, however, whether this buoyant boom time for events can be sustained in Asia across the rest of 2025. In the first quarter of this year alone, geopolitical and economic challenges have dominated the headlines. President Trump’s tariffs and the potential impact on business travel has led to events being put on hold or cancelled altogether with many adopting a ‘wait and see attitude’, while budget restrictions continue to weigh heavily over events.
How APAC performed in 2024
Looking back at the Cvent data, it shows that APAC planners are primarily sending business to Asia, accounting for 56.2% share, with Australia (17.7%) and the Americas (16.8%) also key destinations. The fact that APAC planners are predominantly organising intra-region events could help to cushion adverse impacts from current and future geopolitical and economic outlooks.
“This indicates that APAC planners are more inclined to domestic sourcing, which may be down to travel and visa arrangements,” said Saloni Thapar, analytics manager at Cvent. “Ease of convenience, and cost and budget can be a major factor as well.”
An increasing number of planners – 61% are also sourcing events within APAC for the first time; a clear indication, says Cvent, that more planners are looking to explore countries and cities in APAC for their next event destination. Looking at data specifically related to US meeting planners, 34 countries within APAC received RFPs from the USA in 2024. This has translated to more than 769,000 rooms nights sourced to APAC countries.
More than 11,000 hotels received at least one RFP, indicating high demand and engagement, and more than 1.6 million room nights were sourced to APAC, which Cvent says underlines the huge volume of business headed this way.
“It's very clear that APAC [was] the place to be for events in 2024,” said Thapar. “In terms of how the APAC region is stacking up against the rest of the world with regards to room nights for 2024, the Americas saw a robust growth of 9.2% and UK and Europe was up by 1.7%.”
It’s not a case of increases everywhere, however. Cvent data showed that the Middle East and Africa dropped by 9.2% and Australia and Oceania were down by 11.8%.
“Asia and the broader APAC regions are also facing some declines, with Asia down by 5.6% and APAC overall by 5.8%,” said Thapar. “This highlights the varying dynamics in different regions, with APAC experiencing some challenges in room night growth. It has been a rollercoaster year with some highs and lows, but the year overall closing on a positive note.”
And while India is one of the markets that has grown the fastest in terms of RFPs received, the destination hasn’t received as many room nights as markets such as Japan, Australia, Thailand and Singapore.
Differing RFP times
The data also explored the average response times from venues, a key decision factor for planners. Hotels need to improve their response times to RFPs, with the data showing that 80% of APAC RFPs were awarded to the first three responders, and that 69% of hotels are responding within two days in 2024, compared to a higher number (81%) in 2023.
“In a competitive industry like this, hotels who are quick to respond have an advantage because they showcase their proposals faster,” noted Thapar. “They get a chance to get in touch with the planners to do the negotiations and the discussions, which helps them convert more business.”
When looking at group rate growth by hotel brand/type, the data suggests that budget-conscious groups are driving the highest demand.