Administrative professionals play a pivotal role in the success of a meeting, spending more than 25% of their time planning meetings.
MINNEAPOLIS, MN – April 24, 2024 - TROOP, the award-winning meeting planning and group travel logistics platform trusted by administrative professionals, executive assistants (EAs), and other meeting planners to quickly research, budget for, and organize client meetings, executive offsites, and team trainings, shares key findings from its latest State of In-Person Meeting Planning 2024.
"A great meeting, in person, with clients, colleagues, or team members, is incredibly valuable, and it only happens with attention to detail, coordination, logistics, and a strong understanding of the meeting’s goals. On National Administrative Professionals Day, we present this report to highlight and celebrate the critical role administrative professionals, EAs, and other meeting planners play in bringing people together and ensuring meetings are successful," said Dennis Vilovic, CEO and co-founder of TROOP.
In the wake of the pandemic, there has been a notable resurgence in travel for in-person meetings, as companies bring teams together to collaborate, build relationships, or close that important sale. The burden of organizing these meetings, particularly the smaller meetings with under 30 attendees, has fallen on administrative professionals including executive assistants, HR leaders, department managers, and sales coordinators.
The State of In-Person Meeting Planning 2024, based on a survey conducted by TROOP, offers invaluable insights from administrative professionals across the United States responsible for planning in-person meetings within their organizations. The goal of this research is to help administrative professionals and their organizations understand the time, technology, and effort involved in coordinating in-person meetings.
Key Findings from the Report Include:
- Administrative professionals invest a substantial portion of their time in planning meetings. On average, they spend more than 25% of their time each week, a considerable investment given the full range of their responsibilities.
- Prioritizing a great experience for attendees to facilitate connections ranks as the top objective for meeting planners, slightly higher even than ensuring meetings are within budget.
- Email is the most common technology used for meeting planning today, but for most respondents, it’s just one of several software tools in use. On average, respondents use four different types of software to plan meetings, with some using up to 13 different apps, including spreadsheets, messaging, and travel sites.
Key Challenges Identified by Meeting Planners:
- Effective communication and coordination with attendees emerged as the primary challenge for meeting planners, often conducted via email regardless of meeting size.
- Travel logistics continue to cause challenges. Booking flights and hotels, and researching or booking venues, destinations and activities were all listed as top challenges for planners. Almost a third (32%) of planners reserve hotel rooms and just under a quarter (23%) handle all travel reservations—from hotels to flights—for all attendees.
- Budgeting and approvals constitute another time-intensive element, including setting a budget, budget approval and reconciling costs post-meeting.
“Meeting planning is ripe for innovation, characterized by manual processes and fragmented workflows,” Heather Singh, VP of Product, TROOP. “Selecting when and where to meet is incredibly challenging for meeting planners managing multiple locations, itineraries, and schedules. With TROOP we aim to ease the burden faced by administrative professionals by delivering a purpose-built platform that streamlines the meeting organization process from start to finish, so they can deliver a successful meeting.”
Methodology: TROOP surveyed more than 350 administrative professionals within the United States that organize in-person meetings at their company, in March 2024. The majority of our responders manage multiple calendars, schedules, and in-person meetings for each executive they support.
About TROOP
TROOP is a comprehensive cloud-based meeting planning and group travel logistics platform for companies that plan multiple small, mid-size, and large meetings a year. Trusted by some of the biggest brands in consulting, technology, pharmaceutical and other industries, TROOP helps companies bring people together cost-effectively, efficiently, safely, and sustainably. TROOP is an international, remote-only company with entities in the U.S., Spain, South Africa, and the U.K. Learn more at trooptravel.com. Press Contact: PR@trooptravel.com.
Read the full report here
