News

Confidence is returning to the Conference & Meetings Industry

Cavendish Venues have seen a dramatic rebound in enquiries and confirmations! enquiry levels in June alone were slightly above volumes received in June 19 and only slightly below the all time peak of January 20. Smaller training and meeting room enquires are particularly strong, partly driven by our market leading offer of FREE WEBCASTING EQUIPMENT in all smaller meeting rooms. Particular strong demand for smaller rooms is a trend which seems to be repeating across the sector, for example Make Venues CEO David Vaughton recently said “The demand for training has been particularly pleasing, and to be looking at 2019 levels in the Autumn is really pleasing.’

This mirrors a trend seen across our industry ie a survey carried out by etc.venues show event planners are keen to return to live events with 72 percent planning to hold their next face-to-face event this year. The research also found that 39 percent are planning to organise one to take place in Q3 and 33 percent in Q4. The research, carried out every 6 months, is now on its third edition and highlights significant trends. One key trend revealed that planners have not wavered from valuing the irreplicable quality of face-to-face meetings. Research found that 82 percent say they value them more than before the pandemic. Whilst 68 percent think hybrid events will continue to be more common than before the pandemic, down from 73 percent when asked in December and similar to 67 percent when surveyed 12 months ago. While the frequency of virtual events may decline, the virtual element is likely to have a long-term role alongside live events in the plans of many event organisers. According to the survey, 20 percent will return to live only events in 2021 and a further 23 percent will go back to live only events in 2022, but 57 percent expect to run a mix of virtual and hybrid events as well as live events in future.

Meeting and conference venues across the board are reporting that many organisers are unsure as to how many delegates will actually turn up on the day. Previously organisers used empirical data built up over many years to predict ‘drop out’ rates, in this new world nobody really knows how much they can rely on old world experiences. Here are Cavendish Venues we have slashed minimum numbers and introduced market leading hybrid technologies to help negate this risk + we are on hand ready to share first hand experience as to how delegate numbers are holding up in real life scenarios.