With 2025 just around the corner, now is a great time to think about work resolutions for the new year. If you’re an executive assistant (EA) or a meeting planner, no doubt much of this will involve improving in-person meeting experience while streamlining the planning process.
There’s much more to improving meetings than simply working harder. It’s about working smarter. In this blog, we’ll be sharing tips that will help you transform the way you plan and orchestrate in-person meetings in 2025, from new technologies to organizational tricks.
One of the best (but sometimes neglected) ways to improve your meetings is through attendee feedback.
As an EA or meeting planner, your work is largely done on behalf of others. For a meeting, oftentimes you’re not experiencing the meeting firsthand, unlike those you planned it for. This makes it so much more important to gather insights from attendees so that you can continuously improve the meeting experience for them and ensure you’re always running enjoyable, purposeful meetings that matter. This not only creates a better attendee experience, but also can make planning, managing, and booking meeting details a breeze for yourself.
It’s recommended to do an attendee survey both before and after an in-person meeting occurs. A pre-meeting survey should address logistical needs and operational preferences for smooth planning. A post-meeting survey should ask about their experience for future improvements.
Not sure where to start? Don’t fret. TROOP has created a handy downloadable template filled with 60+ useful questions to get you started.
AI and technology will be essential allies for you in 2025 when it comes to organizing in-person meetings (and a whole lot more). Technology doesn't just make your life easier when it comes to efficiency and task loads, it also enables you to make more informed decisions.
TROOP, for example, lets you compare meeting destinations, manage attendee travel logistics, and estimate overall costs so that you can make important decisions in minutes versus spending hours on research and manual work. Saving yourself time and your company money is a win-win.
Beyond TROOP, tools like Trello can keep projects on track by identifying potential blockers early. Otter.ai handles real-time transcription of meeting discussions, and AI assistants like ChatGPT or Gemini can draft meeting agendas and summarize minutes in seconds.
Need help getting buy-in? Check out our blog, Executive Assistant's Guide to Asking For New Technology, for practical tips on advocating for tools that make your job easier.
Budgets can make or break your meeting performance for 2025. Miscalculations can impact the number of meetings you can execute, as well as the quality of them. To avoid this, you need to start estimating and tracking budgets using data: historical data of your past meetings, tools to help estimate costs, or through manual research. The more data you have at your disposal, the more robust and accurate your budget will be.
When planning your 2025 in-person meeting budget, don’t forget to factor in the unexpected. Even the best laid out plans can go awry (a canceled flight or a last-minute added attendee) and extra costs can add up. It’s always better to overestimate (within reason) and come in under budget than the other way around.
When you’re prepared to discuss your budget with key stakeholders, organize your findings in an easy-to-understand way, like a spreadsheet or a presentation. Provide a clear picture of what you are asking for and why. Explain how you go to your estimations using data and technology and what considerations you took into account.
Providing a great attendee experience was rated the #1 priority for EAs and meeting planners in our Meeting Planning survey. The ultimate goal of in-person meetings is to bring people together so that they can collaborate, solve problems, strengthen relationships, and achieve their goals. Providing a great experience for attendees helps ensure that they’ve made a good investment of their time, as well as the company’s resources.
Doing so doesn’t have to mean going way beyond budget for extravagant experiences. It’s the small things that matter. A VIP attendee experience requires clear and timely communications, personalization at every step, meeting preparation to enable them to come ready to hit meeting objectives, and providing support if and when things go awry. Just to name a few.
For extra credit, find ways to surprise and delight such as having attendees’ coffee orders or favorite snacks prepared, book them on their preferred airlines, share recommendations for local points of interest, and have a driver waiting at the airport when they land.
In order to avoid meeting overload, burnout, and generally negative attitudes toward meetings, in 2025 you’ll want to make sure every meeting you organize is useful and necessary—but also that they stay on track. To do this, it’s crucial to have a clear overarching objective for every meeting. We’d argue this is the most important step when planning a meeting and it affects many aspects including attendees, venue, and more. Once a meeting objective is agreed upon among key stakeholders, it must then be communicated clearly with all other attendees ahead of time, so that they can come prepared, and know what the expected outcomes of the session are.
Next you need a detailed agenda. Understanding which sessions or topics are most important is the key to fulfilling the overall objective. Plan for those first. For each session, determine who is most suitable to lead it, the optimal format, and how much time should be allocated to it.
It’s also a good idea to double-check whether every attendee needs to be there. There’s nothing worse than sitting through a meeting that you didn’t need to attend—especially when you had to travel to get there! Once you’re sure you have the right people in the room, track your time and delegate someone to take notes so that things run as smoothly and effectively as possible.
Using the above meeting planning tips, you can make 2025 your best year yet when it comes to organizing in-person meetings. Start by defining clear meeting objectives, leveraging the latest technology, and focusing on creating a standout attendee experience.
For more tips on planning in-person meetings end-to-end, check out our Mastering Meetups Guide. It’s packed full of valuable advice, from defining meeting objectives, managing travel logistics, and budget planning to attendee communications and post-mortems. Happy planning!