New directives that will govern travel expenditure have been imposed by the US government Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Aimed at limiting federal employees’ travel for meetings, the new rules and further pending legislation could impose further restrictions. The OMB requires that federal agencies reduce travel and meeting expenses by 30% during2013. The directive will also require a review of costs of taking part in meetings that exceed $100,000 and expenditure on any single meeting to be capped at $500,000.
While the public may welcome such oversight and budget restraints, there are clear warnings from areas where meetings contribute to innovation through collaboration and communication among institutions.
It has been pointed out that if applied to a single institution, this could severely limit the exchange within a division. For instance, the U.S. Department of Energy, administers about 17 national laboratories employing about 16,000 scientists and engineers and it appears the OMB rules apply to all of them, other large agencies would fall under the same rulings, that could conceivably limit the number of attendees.
An attendee would typically spend about $2,500 for travel, lodging, meals and registration fees for a 5 day meeting, and with the OMB cap of $500,000, would limit participants to 200 from any single agency. Large conventions have previously seen 600 or more researchers from DOE facilities attending a scientific conference. about 300 – 400 would be restricted from attending from that agency.
However, a large agency whose employees attend one or more scientific conferences, where 1000 attendee spending is cut by a 30% would translate to about $750,000 in savings, not an insignificant amount when large agencies are adjusting to tight budgets. With new budget restrictions, there appears to be a very real contraction in the meetings that employees can attend that will need to be addressed by new formats of information exchange and education. Similarly the meetings industry will come under pressure as meeting participant number are slashed or meetings are rescheduled as smaller local events.
Event organizers for many association group, attendance is a key factor that can adversely affect negatively affect even convention venue revenues and profitability. As a result, venues and Convention Visitors Bureaus are already looking for ways to reduce the overall cost to organizers and competing between destinations where attendees and revenue cost/profitability are a driving factor.
