With today's global economic uncertainty, meeting professionals are facing a double challenge: rising venue and vendor costs paired with unpredictable registration revenue, according to Kimberly Gaiennie (MPI At Large), head of events for Scrum Alliance.

"As an association, we used to rely on registrations to offset expenses, but that’s no longer guaranteed," she says. "We’re also seeing more last-minute registrations and shorter stays, often driven by shrinking professional development budgets, which makes forecasting even more complex."

For events already under contract, Gaiennie is making "tough tradeoffs" such as scaling back on nice-to-have elements (photo booths, live musicians), delaying non-essential decisions until budgets are clearer and leaning on a community of program advisors to facilitate activities in place of paid vendor gamification.

"Looking ahead, we’re taking a more conservative approach: reducing registration projections by 20%, requiring venues to guarantee catering and AV pricing at the time of booking and streamlining our concessions list so vendors know exactly where flexibility exists and where cost savings are critical," she says.

Mike Fleck (MPI Southern California Chapter), director of Synergy Effect, says a budgeting challenge that he’s been facing for quite a while is convincing clients that adding a contingency is good risk management.

"This is especially important in the very early stages of planning and it persists until supplier contracts are issued," he says. "Some clients resist this as they see it as increasing the budget rather than being risk mitigation."

Fleck tries to begin with a 10% contingency across all event costs and, for overseas events, at least a 5% exchange rate contingency to help manage this risk.

"We explain that as the project develops with suppliers and costs locked in, the contingency percentage is reduced," he says.

WHAT MATTERS MOST

A sufficiently detailed budget becomes the blueprint for an event, according to Fleck.

"A well-constructed budget is the single most important element of the early planning stage because it forces the manager to allocate spend to every item giving a more accurate picture of what you’re building," he says. "It then becomes the guardrail as the project progresses, letting you know when things are starting to get off track.

Fleck says it’s also critical to develop a solid event management fee. "We use a detailed resource plan to line item all tasks and allocate time to each," he says. "This way the client sees exactly where the fee is being applied and can take on roles themselves to reduce cost, something not possible with a ‘percentage of total’ model."

Gaiennie knows that effective budgeting does more than balance the books—it directs resources where they create the most impact. "A poor budget can leave you walking into an event already in the red, but a strong budget builds stability and flexibility to invest in what matters most," she says. "For us, that means budgeting not only for financial return but also for community impact. We measure reach (attendance), leads generated (booth visits) and lead conversion (new purchases or renewals after the event). We also track attendee experience through NPS and session ratings. These metrics ensure we’re delivering value that goes beyond revenue. In short, effective budgeting makes it possible to measure success holistically."

ON THE CHOPPING BLOCK

In the current economic landscape, cost cutting is widespread, with entertainment and promotional products ranked as the buckets that planners and suppliers are most likely to target first for a trim, according to MPI’s Q3 2025 Meetings Outlook survey.

In which of the following areas are planners having to make spending cuts and to what extent?

​In which of the following areas are suppliers having to make spending cuts and to what extent?

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