Part
01
of two
Part
01
Meetings Industry Market Size - UK
The UK market size for the meeting industry in 2017 was $22.7 billion. However, we were unable to find the market size for later years or specific information on the London market with attention to meetings of 1-20 people. Our findings and an explanation of our research strategy are detailed below.
HELPFUL FINDINGS
- According to UK Conference and Meeting Survey (UKCAMS), the 2017 market size of UK meetings was GBP £18.1 billion or $22.7 billion USD.
- In 2017, there were an estimated 92.8 million delegates accounting for approximately 147.4 million delegate days. These delegates generated an estimated £18.1 billion of direct expenditure in venues and the wider destination.
- According to research, UK Meetings, incentives, conferences, and exhibitions (MICE) sector had a strong start to 2018 with meetings up 10%.
- According to a 2013 UK Economic Impact Study (UKEIS) report for The Economic Impact of the UK Meeting & Event Industry, Greater London contributed a £5.643 billion Gross Value Added (GVA) in direct meetings activities in England.
- England contributed £17,544 billion GVA for direct meetings activities for £20,639 billion in the UK overall in 2013.
- Although it appears behind a paywall, we found that the UKCAMS Conference and Meeting Survey 2019 Report. The report includes an executive summary, introduction, volume and value of the conference and meetings market plus its dimensions and characteristics, international business, expectations and trends, market insights, venue analysis, and methodology.
RESEARCH STRATEGY
Strategy #1
We started our research by examining both Amex and Cvent for any information on the market size of the meeting industry in the UK. On Cvent, we are able to find a lead for the UK market size of meetings industry which they cited the report of UK Conference and Meeting Survey (UKCAMS), which has a publicly available report for UK meetings market size for 2017. However, the market size report was for the UK overall, no breakdown to exclude the London market share and it is not specific for meetings for 1-20 attendees. While on Amex, we are able to find their 2019 Global Meetings and Events Forecast which has breakdown per region. Here too there was no market size for the UK meetings that excluded the market for London and specific market size for 1-20 meeting attendees. What we find are some non-relevant breakdown data percentage such as days per meeting, cost per attendee, meetings activity by type, etc. by country in Europe.
Strategy #2
Next, we switched gears and tried consulting industry sources that provide market size reports and market analysis for UK meetings markets such as UK Conference and Meeting Survey (UKCAMS), Business Visits and Events Partnership (BVEP), Allied Market Research, PRNewswire, Exhibition News UK, EventBrite UK, HBAA and many others. Also, here, the only market size we found was the 2017 UK meetings overall from UKCAMS (the 2018 and 2019 report were not publicly available and was blocked by paywall request), and the growth of UK meetings, incentives, conferences, and exhibition (mice) for 2018.
Strategy #3
As a final strategy, we tried to triangulate the data to provide specific information on the excluded market of London for UK meeting market size. By searching Economic Impact of meetings industry in UK and Europe that aims to find the market share per region, country or cities specific for 1-20 attendees without success, the only report we find here that has market share of London for UK meetings market is from 2013 most recent report of UK Economic Impact Study (UKEIS) for the Economic Impact of the UK Meeting & Event Industry which has the contributed share breakdown of Gross Value Added (GVA) for direct meetings activities of London in England. Since 2013 is outdated data, we are unsuccessful to triangulate the data to exclude the London share for UK meetings market size, because we did not consider the data as still relevant.