What's in store for meeting planners in 2023?

Talk to a corporate meeting planner anywhere in the world and they’ll tell you the same story: ‘We’re busy, we’re challenged, but we’re also loving it.’

From Europe to the Americas and the Asia Pacific, meeting planners are busier than ever before. For many the programmes they have created in 2022 were generally taking place closer to home, hotel prices are a challenge, and sustainability is at the forefront of everybody’s plans.

As business swings back, meeting planners are also grappling with staffing issues – a lack of manpower and a great loss of experienced practitioners.

But what is also blatantly clear is that planners are up for any challenges that are being thrown their way and their clients want to get on an aircraft once more.

What is interesting is few planners M&C Asia spoke to mentioned the talk of a global recession and how that could potentially impact business.

A desire for the unique

Zaritha van Wyngaardt, owner of The Obvious Choice, a full-service event, travel and incentives agency in South Africa, describes “different” as the new desire among her groups.

“Experiential is the key word,” she remarks. “My clients don’t want the same old destinations. They want different – places that have not been explored to death. They might be interested in a more mainstream destination, like Italy, but not the commercial places like Rome or Venice. They would rather explore smaller towns and regions.”

Van Wyngaardt says in 2022 some of her clients have wanted to travel closer to home but there are others who have done the exact opposite. “They are not scared to travel far and long for a relatively short time – to Singapore for a four-night programme, for example.” 

She puts this down to “revenge travel” – because people had not been able to travel for so long during the pandemic that they are doing it now simply because they can.

Europe-based Marisa Lutter, director of MICE & PR at WI Communications, says during the pandemic clients were holding their events locally. That shifted in 2022 and is likely to shift further in 2023.

But in the United States travellers are remaining far less adventurous, explains chief elevation officer of Elevated Meetings Solutions, Timothy Glanzer. The tide, according to the Las Vegas-based planner, is turning though.

“My client profile is beginning to open back up to taking their events outside of the US and getting back to a global presence in their event rotation,” he says. “They still will hold their events in the US but the attraction to hold events globally is building back up to pre-pandemic levels.”

Glanzer says whether that equates to more international business in 2023 will come down to cost rather than anything else. “Also factored into the decision is the uniqueness of the location and how easy it is to travel to the destination,” he adds.

Like their European and South African counterparts, Australian and New Zealand groups appear to be more adventurous in their meetings and incentive travel programmes, with Australia-based head of Totem and Connections Group Marketing, Tanya Wick, saying her corporate clients are looking for new experiences or destination they have not been to before.

“Most of our clients are looking to travel away from their home cities and those that previously travelled internationally are back travelling abroad again,” she says. “We still do a lot of domestic travel, but clients go to new destinations within Australia, away from their hometowns.” 

Similarly, Auckland-based 212f general manager of events, Adam Leslie, says he is experiencing unprecedented levels of enquiry, with a large number of programmes bound for offshore destinations.

He says clients who had traditionally done overseas programmes pre-Covid and who ran domestic programmes during the past two years were now all wanting to travel internationally again in 2023.

However, getting to destinations like Europe and the US is one of the challenges when Air New Zealand is only at around 60% of capacity compared to what it was. “A lot of our clients were very loyal to Air New Zealand but they’re now having to look at other airlines,” Lesley says.

“We’re telling our clients that it’s more important now than ever to really be thinking ahead – a year ahead. The further you look ahead the better,” he adds.

Safety still takes precedence

On the other hand, uniqueness appears to be less of a driver for MICE programmes in the Asia Pacific.

Singapore-based director of luxury travel and MICE at DNG MICE, Daniel Lim, says his clients during 2022 have wanted to run programmes closer to home and have been less interested in new destinations than those that were deemed safe. 

“After two plus years they are happy just to be able to travel and all feel that it is safer closer to home because of the way Covid has been handled in Asia,” he says. In 2022 Lim had taken clients to Vietnam, Cambodia, Japan, South Korea, Australia and Thailand.

For 2023 he doesn’t see a great change in destination selection, predicting Thailand, Vietnam, South Korea and Japan will be the top four countries for his groups.

Malaysian-based group CEO of brand experience agency, Aavi Worldwide, Francis Cheong, says his clients are also currently travelling closer to home with Bangkok, Yogyakarta, Chiang Mai, and Phuket popular, while domestic activity also remains strong.

Aavi Worldwide and the company’s incentive arm, Apxara Travel & Events, is back to around 80% of the volume of business pre-Covid and he does have concerns of recessionary talk and how that could impact business.

“There is a huge question mark on business in 2023,” Cheong says. “There is so much coverage on the global recession, the weakening ringgit, and the up-and-coming [Malaysian] election late this year. For now, it’s a wait and see situation, but there is hope. We survived Covid so hopefully we’ll survive what’s to come in 2023.” 

Ajaay Kapur, vice president and head of procurement at a large Indian corporation, says key considerations for groups under his management during 2022 have been budgets and safety of travellers, only planning to visit countries where it is deemed safe (in terms of pandemic management), and ensuring Covid precautions are adhered to.

But Kapur is very optimistic on a strong 2023 in line with an anticipated growth in business. “The present spikes in terms of high costs will settle down,” he says. “We assume the MICE business will grow with more countries deploying the safety norms and opening up.”

The big shift: sustainability

One of the biggest focuses now globally is clearly that of sustainability and travel.

Almost every planner M&C Asia spoke to for this report placed sustainability as a key component of future meeting and incentive travel programmes.

The Obvious Choice’s Zaritha van Wyngaardt says her clients are definitely more aware of sustainability, with a greater emphasis on groups reducing their carbon footprint, minimising waste and focusing more on traveler wellbeing – both mental and physical.

Similarly, DNG MICE’s Daniel Lim says programme participants “want to be responsible citizens” and that is impacting their travel and destination choices.

Elevated Meeting Solutions’ Timothy Glanzer in the US is seeing a spotlight on sustainability and wellness “exploding”, adding that it is the new major talking point since Covid has retreated.

212f’s Adam Leslie says his clients were also showing an increasing level of desire to be “good sustainable travellers”, as was 212f, which prompted the company in October to launch KoruGreen, a commitment to make all of its travel incentives, conferences and events net zero.

Europe’s Marisa Lutter says post-COVID her clients are increasingly asking for sustainable elements woven into their programmes. This varies from groups participating in local food donations to staying in sustainably-focused venues that use solar power and have their own food sources.

Don’t forget the sleeping giant

Collectively, higher airfares and accommodation, a lack of availability in many destinations, and operators struggling with low staff numbers are being felt the world over.

Most planners M&C spoke to were confident that the majority of these would be less of a problem in 2023 as airlines add more flights, new hotels open, and recruitment drives begin to yield more favourable results.

On price, South Africa’s Zaritha van Wyngaardt adds that her clients have accepted that for the time being at least “it is what it is” and if clients have made the decision to travel “they factor these matters into their budget”.

With China poised to soon reopen to international travellers, the majority of planners indicate their groups would consider returning to China when that happens.

“Once China fully opens and pricing is cost-effective that region will once again be on our list of destinations to produce meetings and events,” says Glanzer.

Whenever that may be, one thing is already certain: 2023 is going to be a huge year for the meetings and incentive travel sector globally that could very well get the sector back to levels not last experienced since 2019.