With some 7% of on-site corporate meeting attendance displaced by virtual meetings capability in 2010, video conferencing, telepresence and other once emergent forms of virtual meetings are now an important part of the corporate meetings landscape. PhoCusWright’s newly released sizing and analysis of the corporate groups and meetings market assesses key forces driving virtual and video conferencing adoption, including heightened scrutiny over corporate travel spend and the ability to facilitate greater attendance.

PhoCusWright’s Groups and Meetings: Driving Success in Business Travel’s Most Complex Segment examines the impact of video or virtual conferencing on the U.S. corporate groups, meetings and events marketplace. While it undoubtedly has the potential to disrupt the groups and meetings space, enabling virtual attendance by those that may otherwise have traveled, there are clear indications that virtual meetings technology also offers new opportunities for growth.

“Virtual meetings are not just a threat to conventional groups and meetings travel. It is not solely a story about displacement of physical meetings and attendees,” says Susan Steinbrink, senior research and corporate market analyst at PhoCusWright. “It is also about enabling more attendance, expanding accessibility, and ultimately redefining the very notion of what constitutes a corporate meeting.”

PhoCusWright’s Groups and Meetings: Driving Success in Business Travel’s Most Complex Segment provides a robust picture of the U.S. groups and meetings market, based in part on data collected through a survey conducted with more than 600 meeting buyers, including meeting managers, planners, coordinators and procurement professionals. To supplement this extensive data, PhoCusWright interviewed more than 30 suppliers and intermediaries that service the industry – virtual meeting and technology providers, hotels, cruise lines, TMCs, GDSs and others. Key areas of focus in the report include:

  * Market sizing and forecasts for 2008-2012, with analysis of meeting size and types, travel vs. non-travel spend, online bookings, use of intermediaries and more
  * Impact of virtual/video conferencing, with data and discussion on the extent to which virtual elements are displacing and/or supplementing physical meetings
  * Trends in meeting management, including reporting and oversight, the influence of procurement, centralization, outsourcing and SMMP (Strategic Meetings Management Program) implementation
  * Social and mobile technology trends, including how emerging technologies influence the quality of the meeting experience and extend the meeting lifecycle

The strong emergence of virtual/video conferencing is just one of many factors that have effectively reshaped the U.S. corporate groups and meetings market. PhoCusWright’s Groups and Meetings: Driving Success in Business Travel’s Most Complex Segment  delivers the need-to-know intelligence that enables companies to compete in this dynamic segment, which is now on track to achieve double-digit growth by 2012.

Order through February 28, 2011 to save $150 off the regular report price of $995.

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