With many organizations in the midst of setting their travel and event budgets for 2025, the recently released Global Business Travel Forecast from business-travel and meetings agency CWT and the Global Business Travel Association provides data that planners can use to justify next year’s funding requests.
To start, the average domestic-flight cost will come in at about $810 in 2024. The good news is that the average airfare in 2025 is expected to be $814, an increase of just 0.5 percent. The report notes that even with Boeing’s difficulties in delivering new planes to the major airlines in 2024 and 2025, there is still excess capacity due to a softening leisure-travel market. Nearly flat airfares might leave more money available for other meeting-related elements.
That might also be the case on the hotel side as well. Average daily rates for business-focused properties rose from $178 in 2023 to $184 in 2024, an increase of 3.4 percent. For 2025, though, the rate is expected to come in at $187, a rise of just 1.6 percent.
The report states that persistent inflation is competing with leveled-off occupancy rates as factors affecting U.S. hotel prices. Specifically, “business-travel demand, especially group travel, remains durable. … Leisure is softening, which means there is greater focus on transient business travelers and groups.”
Nonetheless, when it comes to cost per attendee for meeting elements—including event space, audiovisual, and food and beverage—rates are climbing steadily. In 2023, the average cost per meeting attendee was $155; in 2024, that figure rose 4.5 percent to $162. And for 2025, the average cost is forecast to be $169, an increase of 4.3 percent.
The report cites several tactics host organizations can use to navigate what it calls a “high-priced M&E environment.” They include:
• Seeking out secondary cities that have lower demand. Booking early is essential.
• Taking a combined approach across meetings, events, and transient business travel to gain more leverage based on volume and having one voice as an organization. This requires compiling data across all travel-spend categories.
• Giving meeting organizers shared responsibility for cost-saving goals around their budgets, which gives them “skin in the game” and makes them more accountable.
• Corporations need to see meetings and events as an investment rather than an expense. This is often the exception, but may become the norm as higher meetings and events costs mean all costs must be justified.
Lastly, the report points out that “healthy travel programs are still a selling point for employee engagement and also for retention of Gen Z employees. … In a softening market, some suppliers might want to break the high pricing environment to gain market share. Buyers must be ready to switch if this happens.”
The full report can be found here.
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