To keep an upcoming 50-person cocktail event compelling on a lean budget, Michelle Cast is embracing storytelling.

New York City-based Cast is director of events for the luxury-travel media company Afar. She has reached out to a spirits-company partner to see if it will be willing to offer a discount on refreshments if the organizers highlight its relationships with local coffee roasters and farms to source ingredients for its cocoa- and cinnamon/coffee-flavored rums. Afar plans to share this on signage at the event.

"We’re going to talk about sustainability and how the drink they are being served comes from working with the local farms and coffee roasters," Cast says. "We want attendees to feel inspired by the drinks we’re serving."

STAYING AHEAD OF COST INCREASES

In MPI’s Q3 Meetings Outlook report, 70% of respondents said they are seeing negative impacts from U.S. executive orders and policy changes, with 59% of respondents citing cost increases and tariffs as adding to the pain.

Accordingly, industry professionals are trying to stay ahead of the increases through creative spending cuts. More than two-thirds of planners are trimming their spending on entertainment (72%), promotional products (70%) and F&B (69%).

Cast, who was events director at Crain’s New York Business until January 2025, has found a way to keep costs down via building strong relationships with hotels. When she booked a series of six power breakfasts for Crain’s during her tenure there, she worked out a deal with a single hotel.

"To secure a good deal with the venue, we tried to book all six at the same time at the same venue," she says.

She also finds cost savings by working with venues that opt for digital signage, to reduce the use of paper.

"You can plug and play right into that, instead of printing programs and brochures—which is so expensive," she says.

Jenny Bjorkloff turns to sponsorships to keep costs down in her role as founder of Freelancers in Belgium, which organizes educational and professional development events for self-employed professionals.

She finds big savings by seeking a corporate sponsor who will host one of her events in its own internal meeting spaces to make its presence known among freelancers.

"It’s usually something they are quite willing to give, because it’s just standing there anyway," she says. In some cases, Freelancers in Belgium holds meetings online, reducing travel costs.

Bjorkloff also looks for a sponsor for the event app, such as the app creator.

"You can also ask your general sponsor to pay for the app and just add that the app is sponsored," she says.

TRENDS, CONTRACTING TIPS

Liz Lathan, CMP, co-founder and chief community officer for Club Ichi, an Austin, Texas-based membership community for B2B event marketers, has found that for-profit industry events are seeing increased attendance due to more aggressive marketing and audience acquisition efforts via full, paid-advertisement blitzes, acquisition of email lists and video advertising.

However, in today’s business environment, some organizers are moving away from larger events and a single, large-scale gathering to more regional, decentralized events.

"They’re not doing the big mega one but doing more road shows and small events around the globe," she says.

They are also relying more on local talent and suppliers. "Instead of hiring the big keynote speaker you would fly to the event, they’re hiring local now," she says. "They’re also hiring local photographers and videographers instead of the ones they would gener-ally bring to all of their events."

The buy-local approach extends to purchasing swag.

"There are tariffs on goods coming in, so you can’t buy your swag from where you normally buy your swag," Lathan says. "We have people that are exchanging information: ‘I have an event coming up in London. I don’t want to bring all the swag with me. Do you have a local London vendor I could use?’ Just leaning on your network, you can find solutions."

Contract negotiation is another place her members are finding savings. Some have carved out contracts that waive the per-head charge for an open bar at a hotel, in favor of charging for drink tickets that get cashed in.

"So maybe it’s $14 per drink, instead of $50 per person, saving a significant amount of money," she says. "Not all of the venues will do it, but in this costcrunch environment, more and more are willing to."

In a similar vein, some are negotiating room-block deals that protect them from attrition fees in the event of bookings after the hotel’s 30-day cut-off date.

"People aren’t registering for events or even getting their hotel room until a week or two before the event," Lathan says.

Meeting planners are counteracting this by negotiating a contract that includes an audit that compares registrants at the hotel to the list of registered attendees and allows for credit for this.

"Making sure you can work with your hotels to do that audit is a very important part of contracting now," she says.

Haley Moore, a sommelier, makes sure that the ROI is clear to clients who arrange virtual wine-tasting events through Acquire, her San Francisco-based event firm. Acquire might deliver 25 to 35 guests from a targeted account list to a tech firm that wants to market its software to attendees.

"We are able to say, ‘Let us coach you on the right kind of people to bring into the room so that if you spend $10,000, you know how much revenue you are going to generate from that experience,’" she says. "Then it becomes a no-brainer if your average deal size is $60,000. A lot of our companies are much, much higher than that. You have a six-times ROI on an event if you close one deal."