Newly-published research from the Institute of Travel Management (ITM) shows that meetings, conference and events spend – so often referred to as the final frontier of travel management - is still some way from being conquered by organisations seeking to consolidate their meetings and transient expenditure.

The survey was undertaken amongst ITM’s panel of 120 business travel buyers, who collectively make up over 40% of the FTSE Top 100 companies.

The panel found that the emotive nature of travel is even greater in the meetings sector, where more stakeholders and the role of meetings in the achievement of wider business objectives make the commoditization of meetings harder.

ITM Executive Director Paul Tilstone explains “With meetings there are more opportunities for things to go wrong on a grander scale. So it’s not surprising that whilst 65% of travel buyers also manage meetings, 67% manage conferences and 60% manage events expenditure, few have made real headway in terms of savings, policy or compliance.”

Despite the trend towards consolidating expenditure, traditional TMCs have not overtaken specialist venue find and event management agencies in popularity amongst buyers. Although 60% deploy a combination of the two, 41% of survey respondents rated their specialist meetings agency as excellent or good compared to 25% for the equivalent service provided by a TMC.

“This is being driven - in part - by the lack of online meetings technology, especially amongst TMCs” explains Paul Tilstone.

“It is clear that there is limited control on MICE expenditure through policy, authorization processes and compliance measurements. Perhaps it is this first step of putting controls in place and measuring activity and spend which needs to happen before consolidation to a single booking methodology can occur” he continued.

However, as Colin Goldney, MD of Argate Consulting - ITM’s research partner – points out, there are massive opportunities in this sector. “With so many companies using a TMC, developing services in this sector could pay dividends for the TMC community. If TMC’s were to focus on their meetings offering they would almost certainly ride the wave of travel buyer consolidation.”

The survey also highlighted a need for greater transparency. Venue sourcing agencies are remunerated through a combination of hidden commissions (12%), transparent commissions (14%), transaction and management fees (18%) or a combination of both commission and fees. However 24% of travel buyers are unsure how they pay meetings suppliers.