Current Trends in Congresses for 2024

The opportunity to network and stay up to date with medical education in person has far greater value than doing so virtually, however we are seeing a drop in HCP sponsored attendance to congress primarily due to budget concerns.  Sponsoring companies are balancing tightened budgets with inflation’s impacts on travel and hotel costs. In addition, there is a real focus on the appropriate number of delegates a pharmaceutical company should send to a congress.  Some companies that previously halted HCP sponsorship have returned to sponsoring HCPs in 2024.  Others have evaluated the approval process for employee attendance to ensure those attending congress have a valid need to be present.

Societies are facing pressures due to lower staff and/or increased volume.

Responses to inquiries and changes often take longer than pre-pandemic. In response to these pressures, some societies are closing registration earlier than in the past, others are not accepting name changes close to the event date. These impacts began during the pandemic, and are continuing in 2024!

Many congress destinations continue to be destinations that are not common on the medical congress circuit.

That’s including Porto, Bucharest, Kigali, Tampa, Florida & Rwanda. Others are scheduled to take place in cities with challenging hotel inventory such as Copenhagen, Denmark and Paris, France. In all instances, secure your room blocks early!

Inflation is a challenge across meetings and congresses.

Congresses drive a lot of cross-border travel often into higher cost cities with elevated pricing due to demand. Rising costs are still a reality this year and this makes it even harder to meet meal and hotel compliance spending caps. Our planners have to allow additional time to obtain required exceptions, or in some cases spend caps just cannot be accommodated. Clients are also finding themselves funnelled into lower cost locations.

In addition, we are seeing more EFPIA countries moving to a host country threshold based hotel accommodation threshold, which causes problems when congress take place in France, Italy, Belgium or the UK due to the low thresholds in these countries.