A Booking.com for Business report indicates that demand for U.S. meetings is strong, budgets are tight, and the way Americans gather for business is shifting fast.

The global events industry is booming, but some of the most compelling data in Booking.com for Business’s 2026 corporate event statistics report is specifically about the U.S. market. Whether you’re planning an annual conference, a sales kickoff or a series of executive roundtables, these trends could come in handy for your next strategy meeting.

The U.S. Market Is Massive — and Concentrated

More than one million corporate events take place in the U.S. each year, reflecting a business culture that continues to invest heavily in face-to-face engagement. But those events aren’t spread evenly across the country. Nearly 40% of all U.S. corporate events are hosted in just three cities — Orlando, Chicago and Las Vegas. So if you need to book any of these top markets during peak convention season, don’t hesitate.

Another interesting trend: Booking lead times for large convention venues have extended to 18–24 months in many cases. Organizations without forward budgets or preferred-supplier agreements are finding themselves priced out or shut out entirely. The planners who are winning on logistics right now are those who locked in dates well ahead of budget approval.

U.S. Budgets Are Among the Highest in the World

American organizations spend nearly twice what European counterparts spend per event, driven by larger attendee numbers, higher accommodation costs in major convention cities, and longer program durations. And costs keep climbing: Per-attendee expenses rose 4.5% in 2024, while fixed costs — venue, production and AV — are being spread across fewer people as events get smaller and more targeted.

Sixty-five percent of corporate event budgets go to just two line items: venue and food. That leaves precious little for technology, programming or contingency. It also explains why secondary-market cities are attracting serious attention — 90% of planners say they’re actively considering them as a cost-saving alternative.

U.S. Events Skew Large — and That Has Budget Implications

American events skew large compared to those of other countries. For example, while German conferences tend to cluster in the 20–50 person range, nearly a third of all U.S. event bookings are for gatherings of more than 500 people. That’s a scale that demands serious logistics: Multiple hotel blocks, complex transportation logistics and AV production budgets that can rival the venue cost itself. It also means that even small per-attendee increases translate into significant budget hits at the total event level.

North American Planners Are Bullish on Growth

Despite tight budgets, the sentiment among U.S. and North American planners is decidedly optimistic about where the industry is headed.

That near-unanimous expectation of growth — particularly from the Fortune 1000 companies — puts planners in an interesting position. Demand is rising, venue inventory in top markets is constrained and per-event costs are going up. The organizations best positioned to execute are those that have built the infrastructure (preferred hotel agreements, centralized booking platforms and early planning cycles) to get ahead of the demand curve.

In-Person Is Back — and Attendees Are Happy About That

Any lingering uncertainty about whether in-person events would fully recover should be put away now that attendance at 78% of corporate events now matches or exceeds pre-pandemic levels. More tellingly, 89% of attendees say they prefer being there in person rather than logging in virtually. The top reasons: Networking, which 61% cite as their primary motivation, followed by learning and career development.

In-person events are 47.8% more expensive than virtual, so the preference carries real budget weight. But the case for the investment is also strong: 80% of attendees consider in-person events the most impactful marketing channel, and 70% say they provide the best professional education. When your attendees believe that strongly in the value of showing up, the ROI conversation gets easier.

This isn’t to say that virtual events are going away. They’re not, but they are much more likely to be a component of a hybrid event than standalone meeting. Eighty percent of planners now run hybrid events as a core format, the study found. Sixty-one percent say hybrid events are more cost-effective than in-person-only formats because they allow organizations to scale attendance digitally without a corresponding increase in physical venue or catering costs.

Not surprisingly, 60% of planners also rank advanced AV support as a top priority, and a third say tech-enabled events are front of mind. Both of these figures reflect the infrastructure demands of delivering seamlessly to in-room and remote audiences simultaneously.

AI and Sustainability Are Reshaping How Planners Work

Fifty-eight percent of event professionals report increased use of AI and automation — not as experimentation, but as day-to-day workflow: registration, agenda personalization, schedule optimization and attendee behavior analysis. For teams managing large event portfolios, automation is quickly becoming a cost-containment tool as much as a productivity one.

Sustainability is equally mainstream: 83% of planners now factor environmental considerations into event design. That’s influencing venue selection, catering choices and supplier contracts — and creating a new set of compliance expectations that planners have to balance against cost and operational feasibility.

The upshot is that, while budget pressure is real and rising, so is organizational appetite for events. The gap between planners who are executing well and those who are scrambling is increasingly about lead time, infrastructure and technology adoption.

The best advice that we can extrapolate from the study’s results are to book earlier than feels comfortable, build flexibility into format decisions — remember, going hybrid can reduce per-attendee costs and carbon footprint simultaneously — and consider secondary markets that can offer better availability and more predictable pricing.