Why Small and Simple Meetings Are Your Program’s Biggest Blind Spot

“Simple” makes something sound straightforward. Easy to manage. Easy to get right. But when it comes to meetings, that’s rarely the case.

A 2025 report from Cvent, surveying more than 500 event professionals in North America, found that 75% said simple meetings account for at least half of their workload.

At the same time, many of these meetings are still being managed without clear structure. Research from the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) showed that 77% of companies rely on consumer channels to source simple meeting venues. Nearly 70% don’t have KPIs in place, and over half don’t track all small meetings spend.

And when you look at the bigger picture, the scale becomes clear.

Come together

On average, up to 65% of meetings and events spend sits in small, simple meetings. Most of them are still booked outside any structured process. That’s where the problem starts.

It’s also why companies like BCD Meetings & Events and event management platform Bizly have been working together to rethink how small meetings are sourced and managed.

Small meetings are rarely owned by event teams. They’re booked by someone who just needs to get people together — team offsite,  client meeting or a short internal session.

It feels quick and simple. But at scale, it creates a bigger issue.

There’s often no consistent process. No clear visibility and no easy way to know what’s being booked, where, or why.

The process doesn’t match the reality

Small meetings aren’t complex, but the way they’re sourced often is.

For many organizations, booking a simple meeting still means emails back and forth with venues, waiting on proposals, chasing confirmations and managing contracts manually.

This creates a lot of work when it’s happening across hundreds of bookings, in different teams and locations. And most of the time these sit outside your main meetings program.

The result can mean:

• Time is lost on admin
• Spend is hard to track
• Policy is applied inconsistently
• Risk increases without anyone noticing.

Why this matters more now

Small meetings used to be seen as low priority. That’s changed.

They now make up the majority of activity in many organizations. They also play a bigger role in how teams collaborate, how sales teams engage clients, and how businesses operate day to day.

At the same time, expectations haven’t changed.

Organizations still need visibility into spend and compliance and need to know that what’s being booked meets their standards. The gap between what’s happening and what’s needed is getting wider.

What a better model looks like

If the above feels very familiar then what can you do about it? Well, organizations that are getting this right are taking a more structured approach to small meeting sourcing.

They’re not adding more process. They’re making the process clearer.

That includes:

• Simple, guided ways to book approved venues
• Built-in policy and preferred supplier visibility
• A consistent way to capture data and track activity
• The ability to route more complex requests to the right level of support

Small meetings aren’t small anymore

Individually, these meetings feel minor. Together, they represent a big opportunity in a meetings program. Better visibility. Stronger compliance. More consistent experiences. Less time spent on manual work.

The ones that recognize this early are the ones that will get ahead, because small meetings don’t need more attention, they need a smarter way of being managed.

If small meetings are a growing part of your program, it may be time to take a closer look at how they’re being managed.

BCD Meetings & Events and Bizly are working together to help organizations bring more structure, visibility and control to small meeting sourcing—without adding complexity for bookers.

If you’d like to explore what this could look like in practice, you can get in touch with our teams to continue the conversation.