For the first time, the meetago group is recording more enquiries for meetings and groups than before the pandemic. Cultural change leads to higher demand for meeting rooms.
Exactly two years after the outbreak of the Corona pandemic, the meetago group has for the first time recorded more meeting and group enquiries than in the same period last year before the pandemic: Compared to 2019, the volume of enquiries rose by a significant 4.5 percent in March.
For Udo Lülsdorf, CEO and founder of the meetago group, this confirms a trend that had already become apparent in February, when the volume of enquiries and bookings reached almost 70 percent of the same month in 2019. “Now we can really say: the meeting business is back,” Lülsdorf is pleased to say.
In his opinion, the positive development is essentially driven by two factors: On the one hand, everyone has learned to deal with the pandemic and to manage the associated risks in the past two years. Secondly – and this is much more decisive – companies now appreciate the value of personal interactions much more. “The pandemic has not only shown that video conferencing is often a viable alternative to business travel. Corona has also made it very dramatically clear that face-to-face meetings are essential for creative exchange or for building and maintaining strong relationships.”´
In fact, Lülsdorf even assumes that the pandemic will result in higher demand for meeting rooms in the medium to long term: “It has been shown that teams can also work together productively if they do not share an office at the company headquarters. On the one hand, the resulting cultural change is creating de-centralised teams, but at the same time it is also leading companies to reduce their office space and the number of desks. As teams want and need to meet regularly, this will prospectively lead to more small meetings in geographically strategically located locations.”
Numerous customers of the meetago group are already well prepared for this. They have taken advantage of the pandemic to expand their existing booking and procurement processes for meetings and groups and to include other company divisions.
The meetago group team is also well prepared. Lülsdorf: “We all want to finish this year more successfully than 2019. We know that the goal is ambitious, but we are confident that we will succeed.”