Some 42 percent of corporate event professionals predict their companies will host more events in 2008 than they will this year, according to the latest Corporate Event Marketplace survey from Special Events Magazine. This is the most optimistic forecast yet in the five-year history of the survey. Last year, 39 percent of in-house event pros predicted they would produce more events in the coming year. In the 2003 survey, only 24 percent predicted a bigger event year to come.

BOOST FOR BUDGETS

Fifty-four percent of respondents predict their company’s budget allocation for staging events will go up next year, while 31 percent say it will stay the same in 2008 and 7 percent say it will go down. Of those predicting a budget boost, 30 percent say they expect to have up to 5 percent more to spend next year than this year, 15 percent say they expect their budget allocation to go up between 6 percent and 10 percent, and 9 percent say they expect a budget boost of more than 10 percent next year.

In an interesting development, the percentage of in-house event pros saying they measure the ROI (return on investment) of their events took a dip this year from the 2006 figure. A total of 51 percent say they attempt to measure the ROI of their events in this year’s survey, down from 56 percent who said so last year. The methods used to rate ROI are (in order): response from attendees; new client leads; client retention; total attendance; revenue; sales; response from management; and surveys.

TAKE IT OUTSIDE

In some good news for independent planners, 37 percent of in-house planners say they contract with independents to produce events, up from 27 percent last year.

See the full story on the survey in the August issue of Special Events.

Photo by iStockphoto.com/ © Patrick Breig