8 Economic Trends Affecting Meetings From ALHI’s Mike Dominguez  

During a session at last week’s Annual Conference of FICP (the association for financial and insurance conference professionals), Mike Dominguez, Associated Luxury Hotels International (ALHI)’s president and CEO, analyzed the latest economic trends affecting meeting planners.

1. Growth of Internal Meetings vs. External-Facing Meetings

According to Deloitte’s 2024 Corporate Travel Report, training, learning and development meetings and team meetings are growing faster this year than sales and client-relationship meetings, which led in 2022 and 2023.

“Planners are getting pushed even harder, because we tend to spend less on ourselves than we do on our clients,” Dominguez said.

“When it comes to clients, leadership says, ‘Spend all you want,’ but when it comes to our team meetings, it’s more like, ‘It’s not that we don’t care about our teams, but we need to manage our expenses.’”

2. Business Travel Budgets Are Up

The Deloitte survey asked respondents how their 2024 corporate travel budgets compared to 2023 –only 6% said they were lower. And only 6% said they’d be lower in 2025.  

“That means everybody else who answered expects more business travel overall, and that’s a very healthy sign,” said Dominiguez.

3. Meeting Costs Per Attendee Are Up

The latest CWT-GBTA Global Business Travel Forecast found that the meeting cost per event attendee has increased 4.5% in 2024, to $162 per person.

“That’s a really good metric that you can take to your stakeholders and say, ‘This is what the industry is doing,’ especially if you’re in an environment where you’re competing for the same clients as others,” he said.

4. Availability is the Top Concern

“The three questions we always ask hotels are still the same: rates, dates and space. It hasn’t changed in 35 years,” Mike Dominguez said. “These are still the number one driver.”

Because of the lack of full-service hotels being built, he now sees space as the top concern, displacing rates. “Planners are saying, ‘I can’t find any place to take my meeting.’ And that is now what’s also driving costs across the board.”

5. Rates Are Not Negotiable

Hotel labor costs are rising faster than their revenue, and that leaves planners with little room to negotiate rates. 

“The number one cost for any hotel is labor,” he said.“It is the reason we are at all-time record revenue, and yet gross operating profit margins are shrinking consistently year over year.

“I hear from planners all the time, ‘I can’t believe the hotel won’t move $5 on the rate’ – but $5 matters today because the margins are razor-thin. So instead of asking hotels for a specific thing, talk to them about what you are trying to accomplish and ask them to help you get there.”

6. Compression Won’t Let Up Until  2027

The renovation of major convention centers in Dallas and Austin is only making compression worse, said Dominguez. “In an environment that’s already compressed, we‘re compressing it more. “I don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel until 2026 or 2027.”

7. Texas is Becoming the Next Financial Hub

Research from the U.S. Department of Labor shows that Texas now has more financial and insurance employees than New York. In June, TXSE Group, backed by BlackRock and Citadel Securities, announced plans to launch the Texas Stock Exchange in Dallas in 2025.

“Planners in the financial services industry need to think about where their attendees are coming from,” said Mike Dominguez. “There’s been a dramatic population shift across the U.S. and huge growth in the Southeast.” 

8. Food Prices Remain Inflated

Food prices are still 18% higher than in 2019, according to McKinsey Global Economic Intelligence. Eggs are up by 70%. Many other products, from olive oil to coffee, have been impacted by growing conditions around the world.

“So when your boss asks you why you need a bigger budget, at a minimum you need a budget that’s 18% higher than 2019,” Dominguez said.