IACC and the Society for Hospitality and Foodservice Management have released a combined research project, “Trends in the Meeting Venue Industry,” which provides insights and predictions on the U.S. conference venues market from a venue perspective.

The report is available in two versions, one that focuses on residential conference venues (venues that offer guest rooms as well as meeting facilities) and the other on non-residential.

Both versions utilize full year 2018 operating data collected from 69 IACC and SHFM member venues in the U.S. and explore a variety of elements including average rates; occupancies; package allocations; salary benchmarking; source of business; utilization; technology procurement and running costs. When possible, the results in these reports contain comparisons to results published in previous joint IACC and SHFM reports.

The report versions include data on both types of venues that are available for any organization to book and private venues that are owned and run by individual corporations.

Key data points include:

• Residential venues host significantly higher percentages of local groups (67%) than non-residential venues (41%)
• Non-residential venues host more national groups (49%) than residential venues (16%)
• 100% of marketed (commercially available) residential venues offer incentives for groups to book during low-demand periods – representing 60% of venues overall
• Survey participants rate repeat customers (100%) and referrals (88%) as the most effective sources of business, followed by website leads (50%), personal sales calls (50%) and online advertising (43%)

“The outlook for the U.S. economy is strong, with predictions that meetings business will continue to grow, including 50% of those surveyed feeling conference and meeting duration will increase in the next 12 months,” said Mark Cooper, IACC’s chief executive officer.

Check out the infographic below for a high-level summary of the information you will find in the reports. The full versions can be purchased from IACC’s website here.