SITE Foundation Study: Travel Coming Back: Hybrid Meetings the New Norm

A detailed study of 100 corporate incentive and meeting buyers across a cross-section of industries finds that US incentive travel and meetings are coming back sooner than expected this year and may return to normal volume by as early as 2023 if the pandemic is controlled. While virtual formats will not replace live events, many companies envisage more use of hybrid events in the coming years.

 

Here are some of the key findings from a detailed survey of 100 corporate end-users representing a cross-section of US industries. 

 

• 94% of the 50 companies surveyed state that their incentive travel programs are 100% supported by the leadership. 

• The survey finds negligible levels of decrease for classic in-person incentives over the next three years among the 50 corporations, with both categories reporting net increases of 18% and 12% respectively. Pure virtual meetings will see a net decrease of 14% but hybrid reports a net increase of 18%. 

• While corporates’ experiments with virtual events seem to have been unsatisfactory overall – this category reports the single biggest percentage decrease in the coming years (34%) of all categories – there were, obviously, some efficiencies achieved that can be incorporated into hybrid, the category reporting the single biggest increase (32%) of all categories.

• 71% of the 50 US corporations who participated in the April 2021 survey state they replaced their 2020 travel incentive with another reward.

• Only 31% report the 2021 travel incentive will be replaced by another reward, indicating a significant improvement in positive outlook between September 2020 and April 2021. 

• Encouragingly for the global incentive travel industry, 82% of the respondents are now actively planning in-person travel incentives for 2022 and beyond, with only 2% of respondents reporting any permanent swing away from in-person incentive travel. 

• Over 80% of respondents state that they will operate their first, post-pandemic domestic meeting/event in the second half of 2021. 

• Domestic incentives are not behind, with about 55% of respondents planning 2021 delivery. 

• If, on the domestic front, corporate meeting recovery is outpacing incentive travel, then this is reversed when it comes to international events where, counterintuitively, incentive travel is outpacing corporate meetings with over 35% of US corporations operating their first post-pandemic international in-person incentive travel experience in late 2021.

 

Buyers anticipate major changes in Force Majeure clauses and rebooking clauses to endure; believe that relationships across all areas of travel count more than ever, and that the need for flexibility and agility is paramount.