Amex GBT's 2027 meetings forecast finds 93% of planners optimistic about the year ahead, and also expects cost per attendee to rise across every meeting type. For organisers, that pairing matters at the registration desk: you will be asked to deliver more certainty per head from a budget where every head costs more.
What did the Amex GBT forecast actually say?
American Express Global Business Travel published its 2027 Global Meetings and Events Forecast in mid-October. According to Business Travel News Europe, the survey covered 500 meetings professionals across 11 countries, and 93% of them feel positive about the sector's health in 2027.
Hotel Dive reports that the forecast expects cost per attendee to rise for every meeting type, with higher hotel room rates behind much of it, and that cost has become the top factor planners weigh when choosing a venue. Planners are also moving some events out of traditional hotels and into restaurants, cultural sites and boutique venues.
The reaction to pressure is where it gets interesting. Business Travel News Europe puts it in terms of geopolitical instability: 39% would choose different destinations, 37% would run more virtual meetings and only 22% would respond by holding fewer meetings. Skift Meetings, writing from IMEX America, repeats the same three numbers. Hotel Dive frames the destination and virtual figures as responses to rising costs rather than instability, so read them as planners adapting to a squeeze, whichever side of it you stand on.
Planners are not cancelling the meeting, they are interrogating the attendee list.
Why is optimism with a rising bill a registration story?
Because the number that sets the cost per attendee is the number of attendees, and the number of attendees is decided on your registration page. If the hotel, the catering and the transport all go up per head, the denominator is the only line you can still influence. A registration form that quietly loses a tenth of the people who clicked "register" is a cost increase nobody sent a press release about.
Skift also quotes Caesars' chief sales officer Michael Massari as saying planners are not cutting meetings over cost but are scrutinising why, when and who attends. That fits the 22% figure. If the meeting survives but every guest has to justify their place, the attendee data you collect at registration (job title, company, which sessions they chose) turns from admin into evidence. Somebody in finance will ask who actually came.
What does this mean for event organisers?
Treat every line item that scales with attendance as a risk, and ask which of your suppliers are on that list. Venue, food and transport scale with heads whether you like it or not. Your registration software does not have to.
Tired of Fee Announcements? Go Flat
eventcloud charges one subscription with no per-ticket fees, so platform news stops being budget news.
That is a choice about pricing model, not quality. Some platforms charge per ticket or per registrant, so a successful event is also a larger invoice. Others charge a flat amount for the seat that runs the event. When cost per attendee is already climbing from other directions, a model where the software cost is the same at 500 registrations as at 50,000 gives you one fixed number in a forecast full of moving ones.
Here is the honest edge of that argument. A flat seat price only helps if you actually have volume to spread it over, and a single small event with a few dozen guests will not feel the difference. It also does not touch the costs the forecast is really about. No software subscription will lower a hotel room rate.
What does the forecast not tell you?
Quite a lot, which is worth saying plainly. The coverage reads like a sentiment survey rather than a spend audit: Hotel Dive says it gives no figures on budgets, attendance or AI adoption, and Business Travel News Europe notes that the cost-per-attendee rise has no specific percentage attached. So "costs are rising" is a direction, not a number you can paste into a budget.
Skift's piece also cites Maritz Event Price Index figures and a fall in international registrations at Maritz clients. Those numbers appear in that one report and I could not find a second outlet carrying the 2026 figures, so they are not repeated here. If you plan to use them in a board paper, check the original Maritz material first.
What should you do before the 2027 budget lands?
Build two versions of next year's registration cost, one at your current volume and one at double it, and look at what changes. Any supplier whose line moves with the volume deserves a conversation now, not when the event has already sold out. For the registration side, the questions are simple: what does the platform charge at 500, at 5,000 and at 50,000 registrations, and what happens if you add an event?
eventcloud's answer is a flat $125 per user per month on the pricing page, with unlimited events, registrations and tickets, and payments going straight to your own Stripe account. You pay per user, from one, so a larger team costs more even though a larger crowd does not. If you want to see how registration forms and ticket groups work before you price anything, the registration feature page walks through them.
Optimism is lovely. A budget that does not depend on it is better.
