Meetings/Hospitality Industry Riding Crest of Upswing

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa, Jan. 28, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- After a stretch of rapidly rising room rates and increased meetings attendance following the recovery from the Great Recession of 2008, the sense of prosperity felt within the meetings and hospitality industry seems to have plateaued, with hotel room rates expected to rise at a reduced clip and attendance predicted to continue its gradual upward momentum.

The prognosis was the result of Meetings Today's annual Meetings Today Trends Survey, which featured responses from more than 600 primarily U.S.-based meeting planners. The full results, feedback from meeting planners who took the survey and an article about the incentive travel habits of Millennials penned by Issa Jouaneh, senior vice president and general manager of American Express Meetings & Events, are available here: http://www.meetingstoday.com/Magazines/Trends/tabid/449/Default.aspx

"The planners who took the survey this year were generally upbeat, responding that they expected both the number of meetings and the attendance at those meetings to rise in the next 12 months," said Tyler Davidson, vice president and chief content director of Meetings Today. "And even though budgets to produce meetings and events were not expected to rise greatly to fill this need, planners were generally more upbeat even about this somewhat stubborn trend that has made their jobs tougher since 2008.

"Also, to gain an outside perspective on what to expect from the hotel side of the industry in 2016, we interviewed Bobby Bowers, senior vice president of STR, the leading hotel consultancy in North America. While STR expects a rise in hotel rates of approximately 5 percent over the next year, it also believes we could be nearing the end of a cycle that favors the supplier side of the hospitality industry."

Other features of the wide-ranging survey include meeting planner predictions on booking cycle lengths, meeting duration, the sites and facilities chosen for meetings and events, sustainability efforts, demographic information, and responses on career satisfaction, industry association involvement and perceived threats to both their careers and the meetings and events industry as a whole.

To view the full results of the Meetings Today Trends Survey, visit the website.

About Stamats Meetings Media

Stamats Meetings Media is a division of Stamats Communications, Inc., based in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Meetings Today produces content geared toward the meetings industry within its monthly print publication Meetings Today, on the web at www.MeetingsToday.com, and through various newsletters and webinars, in addition to its Meetings Today Live! series of hosted-buyer educational events, among other products.

SOURCE Meetings Today