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Green Shoots Forecast by Britain's Live Events Sector

Eventia today publishes its latest White Paper on trends and prospects for Britain’s business events sector. Entitled ‘Green Shoots Forecast by Britain’s Live Events Sector’, the Paper represents an important contribution to National Meetings and Events Week and the ongoing ‘Britain for Events’ campaign.

Against a backcloth of substantial cutbacks in public expenditure and the anticipated decline in public sector events, there are some modest but significant positive indicators generated by the private or corporate sector. The White Paper highlights:

• Growth in corporate meetings and event budgets for 2010-11 revealed by recent buyer research
• Greater recognition among businesses of the vital role that face-to-face meetings and communications play in building and maintaining long-term commercial relationships
• Growth in the numbers of meetings and business events planned by the corporate sector over the next twelve months
• Increase in incentive travel and performance improvement activity by companies
• Projected cumulative growth of 24 per cent in the corporate hospitality segment between 2009 and 2014
• Strong recovery in the staff entertainment market, by as much as 30 per cent, with bookings for Christmas 2010 looking especially buoyant
• Opportunities generated by the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games for business events, both in the lead-up to the Games and in the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity afforded by the Games to showcase Britain as an incentive and business events destination and to grow inbound business visits after the Games. An Oxford Economics report estimates that some £433 million of benefit (at 2006 prices) will come from additional business events expenditure as a result of the Games.

Eventia’s White Paper also summarises major issues and challenges facing event organisers; provides the latest data on volume and value aspects of the live events sector; underscores the essential role that live events and face-to-face communications play in Government, organisational and business communications; and argues the case for the meetings and live events industry to be thought of as a key component in the global knowledge economy, rather than as a branch of tourism.

Eventia Chairman, Mark Saxby, comments: “We fully recognise the scale and threats posed by cuts to public expenditure but also believe it’s vital not to miss the important green shoots and positive indicators for our sector. Given pressures on budgets, ROI and ROO (return on objectives) are becoming ever more important. The fact that live and face-to-face events are increasingly being recognised as the most effective form of communication is a very positive factor, but there is still work to be done to get the message across to all stakeholders. We need to continue to raise the profile of events to show that they are crucial for businesses, associations and governments to realise their objectives and achieve success.”

The white paper can be obtained by clicking on the link below.

Download attached files below

• Eventia Green Shoots White Paper