Meetings and Events Recovery Bodes Well for 2023

If you’re looking for a reason to feel good about moving into the New Year, here it is. The U.S. monthly meetings and events data for October were recently released, and it’s good news as we near the end of 2022 and head into 2023 under a cloud of economic uncertainty. Knowland, a provider of data-as-a-service insights on meetings and events for hospitality, reports 131.7% growth over October 2021. Additionally, October 2022 grew by 21.2% over September 2022.

Other major insights from Knowland include:

• The average number of attendees per event for October 2022 was 119, compared to 110 in October 2021 and 95 in October 2019.
• The average space used in October 2022 was 3,124 square feet. Meetings in October 2021 averaged 2,734 square feet and 3,151 square feet in 2019. Proportionally from a per-person (p/p) perspective, the 2022 meeting space used an average of 26 square feet of p/p as opposed to 24 square feet p/p in 2021 and 33 square feet p/p in 2019.
• The corporate segment represents 53.1% of the meetings and events business, with healthcare taking the lead as the largest industry segment.
• From a recovery standpoint compared to October 2019 levels, urban infrastructure, transportation, online retail, environmental services and sports entertainment were the segments at the highest level of recovery captured in October 2022.

Kristi White, chief product officer at Knowland, says, “October eclipsed September by 21.2%. While this is normal month-over-month seasonality, it is higher than average. Additionally, the U.S. recovered 89.7% of 2019 event volumes in October, an improvement over September. This is the fifth month in a row the U.S. has eclipsed 80% recovery. Traditionally, November and December are softer months, and we anticipate that will be the case this year. However, we are confident the recovery metrics will hover near the 90% mark for both months.”

The insights presented are a result of the analysis of meetings and events data acquired through Knowland data collection and aggregation methods, including field reporting, and automated methods of customer and non-customer data collection in primary, secondary and tertiary markets, as well as its large historical database.