By Mary Tucker | Senior Communications and Content Manager | IAEE
If you’re a senior executive navigating today’s unpredictable business environment, you already know that planning ahead requires more than instinct – it requires data. That’s exactly what IAEE’s upcoming webinar, CEIR Index Update: Where the U.S. B2B Exhibition Industry Stands and What Comes Next, delivers: a clear-eyed, authoritative look at the current state of the U.S. B2B exhibition industry, backed by the latest research and real-world benchmarks.
Nancy Drapeau, IPC serves as Vice President of Research at the Center for Exhibition for Industry Research (CEIR), IAEE’s research division. She will be joined by Adam Sacks, President of Tourism Economics, to look at the latest data from the newly released CEIR Index. The CEIR Index is a powerful strategic planning tool built to help exhibition industry professionals make smarter, more confident decisions. Powered by Oxford Economics’ Symphony BI, the CEIR Index Dashboard delivers robust data and forecasting through 2028, giving leaders a clear picture of where their sector is headed, and what that means for their events and bottom line.
Adam will be presenting the latest CEIR Index data, including the macro and geopolitical forces shaping industry performance. Nancy will be sharing benchmarks and insights from the Organizer Benchmarking Study and other recent CEIR research, with a focus on the metrics that drive event strategy and business decisions.
Here, Adam and Nancy offer a preview of what attendees can expect.
ADAM: The CEIR Index Dashboard features abundant data that users can use to develop their business strategies. Can you briefly touch on the single most important takeaway from the 2025 results that exhibition industry executives need to hear right now?
The key message is that the industry recovery is real, but uneven and incomplete. Attendance is growing again, but revenue is not keeping pace.
In 2025, the CEIR Index reached 93.6 – still 6.4% below 2019 levels. Attendance showed strong growth (+4.7%), but real revenues remain more than 10% below pre-pandemic levels. The gap matters: more participation is no longer translating into stronger revenue the way it used to, due to changes in pricing, costs and exhibitor mix.
ADAM: Forecasting through 2028 is no small task given today’s volatile macroeconomic and geopolitical landscape. What are the key variables you’re watching most closely, and how are they factoring into the industry outlook?
The outlook through 2028 is shaped less by overall growth and more by who is spending and how consistently.
Higher-income consumers, strong companies and policy-supported sectors are supporting demand, while cost-sensitive segments are pulling back. This helps explain the current split: attendance is improving, but exhibitor participation and revenues are recovering more slowly.
We’re also watching financial conditions, inflation in travel and services, and geopolitical uncertainty. These don’t cause sudden shocks as much as they weigh on confidence and planning. The result is a gradual, uneven recovery rather than a sharp rebound and stronger in some sectors than others.
ADAM: For executives who are in the middle of planning cycles right now, how should they be using this forecast data, and what’s the biggest mistake you see leaders make when interpreting economic projections like these?
Executives should use the forecast as a planning tool, not a mere prediction. It’s most useful for testing assumptions about attendance, exhibitors, pricing and costs, under different scenarios.
Instead of relying on one growth number, leaders should ask where demand is strong, where pricing may be under pressure and how their model performs if growth is uneven.
The biggest mistake is treating forecasts as guarantees. Many leaders focus on the headline direction and miss the underlying variation. That can lead to overestimating revenue, underestimating cost pressure or assuming a smoother recovery than what actually happens.
The best approach is to plan for different outcomes and build flexibility, because success now depends less on getting the macro call right and more on adapting when conditions don’t play out evenly.
NANCY: With so many metrics available to event organizers, which benchmarks from the Organizer Benchmarking Study are proving most critical for leaders trying to make smart strategic decisions in the current environment?
The most impactful metric identified in the latest organizer benchmarking survey, fielded in February, continues to be Net Promoter Score (NPS). Too few organizers use NPS to gauge exhibitor and attendee sentiment, which is unfortunate, given that organizers who do track this metric reported better revenue outcomes in 2025. At a minimum, tracking NPS is associated with stronger performance.
NPS results segment respondents into three categories – Promoters, Passives and Detractors – with accompanying commentary that can be reviewed by segment. This structure makes it easy to identify what worked well at a show (Promoters), where improvements are needed (Detractors) and where participants may be at risk of defecting to a competing event (Passives). These insights support focused discussion and action planning to improve outcomes for the next edition of the event.
NANCY: How has organizer behavior and strategy shifted in the most recent research compared to prior years and what does that signal about where the industry is heading?
One subtle shift this year may reflect sampling differences or a modest change in response to current business conditions. In this year’s sample, 41% of organizers report events with an international geographic scope. While this is within the margin of error, it is slightly lower than last year, when 44% of organizer events were international in scope.
In discussions with organizers last year, CEIR noted that, in the current environment, the strongest opportunities are domestic. Headwinds affecting international participation have been significant and continue to persist. Additional shifts will be explored during the webinar.
NANCY: For someone who has yet to engage deeply with CEIR research, how would you describe the practical, day-to-day value these insights can provide to those who attend the webinar?
The webinar is intended to prompt organizers to take a clear set of next steps with CEIR resources. First, organizers should submit their event data to gain Contributor‑level access to the CEIR Index Dashboard. In parallel, they should open an Event Performance Analyzer (EPA) account.
The CEIR Index Dashboard provides a high‑level snapshot of how a sector is performing relative to the overall exhibition industry, along with a forecast outlook through 2028. The Index includes benchmarks for attendance, exhibitor participation, net square feet (NSF) of paid space and organizer gross revenues.
The Event Performance Analyzer brings this benchmarking down to the event level. By submitting data through an EPA account, which is the recommended way to contribute data, organizers receive charts showing how their event’s performance compares directly with CEIR Index sector benchmarks.
To go deeper, organizers can use the Organizer Performance Benchmark Playbook, which details additional metrics commonly used in strategic planning. The playbook includes a spreadsheet of benchmarks, while the accompanying report provides interpretation and context.
Together, these three resources – the CEIR Index Dashboard, the Event Performance Analyzer and the Organizer Performance Benchmark Playbook – equip organizers with trusted industry benchmarks that can be pulled directly into a strategic planning document. Organizers can clearly document how their event performed relative to industry norms and then layer in goal setting for the next edition.
This approach supports more informed strategic planning. Goals can be set using credible industry benchmarks, helping organizers determine what constitutes a reasonable target for growth. While stretch goals remain important, these tools help define how much stretch is realistic given current industry conditions.
