In a third quarter update to its U.S. Meetings Recovery Forecast (MRF) released late last year, Knowland predicts that 2023 will be a year of growth and not just another year of recovery. The company, known for providing data insights on meetings and events for the hospitality industry, also offered an updated Top 25 U.S. Meetings Recovery Forecast (MRF25).
U.S. Meetings Recovery Forecast
The MRF offers projected industry recovery patterns and is based on Knowland’s proprietary data and regression models that include almost 20 million global events over the last 15 years.
· Since the last forecast released in July, the outlook for the United States raised slightly from 72.6 percent recovery by the end of 2022 to 73.1 percent recovery.
· Perhaps the best news is that meeting levels will recover to 106.4 percent of 2019 levels in 2023 and 129.2 percent in 2024.
Top 25 U.S. Meetings Recovery Forecast
Knowland added the MRF25 in February 2022 examine industry recovery patterns for the top 25 U.S. markets. These cities include Anaheim, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, Nashville, New Orleans, New York, Norfolk, Oahu Island, Orlando, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis, Tampa, and Washington, D.C.
This forecast uses a natural recovery model, assuming historic seasonal patterns without major market disruption, to index the recapture of meeting activity compared to baseline levels from 2019.
· The recovery forecast improved for 14 markets when compared to the last projection in July 2022. These cities included Anaheim, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Norfolk, Oahu Island, Orlando, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, and St. Louis.
· It was lowered in seven markets: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Miami, Phoenix, Tampa, and Washington, D.C.
· The remaining four top 25 markets were unchanged from the prior quarter.
· Three markets are anticipated to be fully recovered by the end of 2022: Dallas, Phoenix, and Nashville. All three of these markets are unchanged from the prior quarter.
· Five markets will be above 80 percent recovery by the end of 2022: Atlanta, Denver, New Orleans, Orlando, and Tampa.
· Fourteen markets will recover between 50 and 80 percent, and only Chicago and Philadelphia are forecasted to be less than 50 percent recovered by the end of 2022.
Moving Forward
Significant recovery is expected in 2023 with an additional 11 markets reaching 100 percent or greater recovery: Anaheim, Atlanta, Denver, Detroit, New Orleans, Oahu, Orlando, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, and Tampa. Six will reach 90 percent or better recovery, including Boston, Houston, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, and St. Louis. The remaining five markets will fall between 80 and 90 percent recovery.
The meetings and events business should be even closer to normal in 2024 with 23 of the 25 markets reaching 100 percent or greater recovery, with Chicago and Philadelphia expected to achieve 90 percent or better percent recovery during 2024.
“The third quarter [of 2022] was the strongest of the year. Each month the recovery to 2019 has grown, with September nearing 90 percent recovery (89.5 percent),” says Kristi White, Knowland’s chief product officer. “We are poised to reach greater than 90 percent recovery in at least one month in the last quarter.
