Meeting professionals must be savvier than ever, with food and beverage pricing through the roof, room rates on the rise and additional hotel fees and surcharges at the forefront.

After a year of reconnection and recovery, the meetings and events industry has big expectations—and challenges—for 2023.

CVBs, aka DMOs, have long played a critical role for meetings and events.

As meeting professionals skill up to greet the new age of meetings and events, it’s more important than ever to re-evaluate and update the defined value proposition for bringing people together.

If the last few years have taught us anything in the events industry, it’s to be prepared for anything.

It’s been a tough couple of years. The pandemic, resulting shutdown and lingering impact on business events is rightly top-of-mind. The focus has been on cancellations, virtual meetings, the “ids”—CovID and HybrID.

Now is the time to start thinking about the 2023 sales kick-off events. For many organizations, this is the first time in three years they will be hosting their “traditional” kick-offs.

We’re ready to move forward with in-person meetings, but the site selection and contracting process that meeting professionals know from just a few years ago has changed.

Contracts are always under scrutiny, and perhaps more so as we hopefully exit the COVID-19 era, so it’s more important than ever to be proactive in ensuring the utmost cost containment and risk reduction measures for your organization.  

When it comes to predicting the next big thing in event F&B, planners nor suppliers have a crystal ball, especially following two years in a pandemic.