Ask a revenue manager how next March is tracking and you’ll get an answer in seconds: rooms on the books, the same point last year, the variance and what they plan to do about it. Ask the events team the same question and you’ll usually be taken through the function diary and a list of proposals that look promising.
That’s not a criticism of events teams. Most have never been given the data or the tools to answer it any other way. But it is a problem, because meetings and events aren’t a side line. IDeaS has estimated that M&E makes up 20 to 30 per cent of revenue for the average hotel, and for conference-led properties it’s much higher. A revenue stream that size needs the same forward view as rooms.
The group nobody sees whole
Take a two-night conference for 80 delegates. Say function space, catering and AV come to $28,000, and the room block is 160 room nights at $210, which adds another $33,600. The revenue manager sees the room block in the group pace report. The events team sees the $28,000 in the function diary. Nobody sees a $61,600 piece of business being weighed against how that month is actually tracking.
So decisions get made on half the picture. Revenue might push back on the group because the room rate sits below what they expect transient guests to pay, without seeing the space and catering that come with it. Events might discount a room to win a day meeting on a date that could have anchored a residential conference. Each team is right by its own numbers, and the hotel still leaves money on the table.
Pace is not pipeline
Most events teams already have a pipeline report, so the difference is worth spelling out. Pipeline tells you what might come in. Pace tells you what’s actually on the books for a future period compared with where you were at the same point last year, or against budget. Pipeline is hope weighted by probability. Pace is a fact you can act on, early enough to change the outcome. That matters more for function space than almost anything else in the hotel, because once an empty date passes, the revenue is gone for good.
Why events fell behind
Event bookings are messier than room bookings. One booking can cover three spaces over two days, with catering by day part, AV and a room block. It can sit as a tentative hold for six months and change value three times before it’s contracted. And many event systems only report from today’s data, so they overwrite history and keep no record of what was on the books this time last year.
That last point is the one I’d fix first, because you can’t reconstruct last year’s position after the fact. If your system doesn’t keep history, start taking a weekly snapshot now, even if it’s only an export to a spreadsheet. In twelve months you’ll have your first true year-on-year comparison. Every week you wait pushes that date back.
What a useful event pace report shows
- Revenue by event date, not booking date. You want to know what’s on the books for March, not what was signed in March.
- Definite and tentative business shown separately. Tentative holds inflate the numbers. Report definite pace on its own and show tentatives alongside, ideally weighted by status, so a pile of optimistic holds can’t hide a soft month.
- Movement, not just the total. A steady number can hide a lot of churn. Break it into new bookings, upsells, cancellations and changes in value, including room blocks that are cut back or released before arrival.
- Segment and lead time. Build a booking curve for each segment from your own history. If corporate meetings usually book eight weeks out and weddings nine months out, a gap four months away is still a corporate opportunity. A Saturday nine months out that hasn’t gone to a wedding by now probably won’t, so it may be better sold to another segment.
- Day part. Function space sells by the morning, afternoon and evening. A month can look fine in total while Monday and Friday mornings sit empty.
- Lead source and salesperson. These show which channels, such as a brand sales office or RFP platforms, are feeding future business, and whose pipeline has stalled, including across properties if sales is clustered.
Put events and rooms side by side
A combined view adds event revenue and the group rooms attached to it for the same period, measured against the same comparison point. It shows things neither report can show on its own. A month can look healthy on event revenue while the attached room nights sit well below last year. That usually means the mix has shifted from residential conferences to day delegates. You’d want to know that months out, while there’s still time to go after residential business.
It also gives sales and revenue management a shared basis for the hardest call in group sales: take the group, or hold the rooms for higher-rated individual guests. Displacement analysis based only on room revenue tends to undervalue groups. In my experience, a group that looks marginal on function space often looks very different once you add the room nights, and the reverse holds too. A big room block with little food and beverage might be one to price harder. When both teams see the full value together, they can decide before the dates are gone.
For hotels whose events rarely include accommodation, and for venues without rooms, event pace still works perfectly well on its own.
Make it a weekly habit
Corporate events book close in. FCM Meetings & Events’ 2025 Global Trends Report found that a third of corporate event venues were booked within three months of the event, and 60 per cent within six months. A gap can open and close inside a month, so a monthly report will miss it.
The hotels that get the most from pace review it weekly, with events, revenue and the director of sales in the same room. Thirty minutes is enough if it sticks to three questions:
- Where are we behind over the next 90 days, and why?
- Which tentatives need a decision?
- What are we doing about it?
The answer to the third question might be a rate change, a promotion for soft dates, releasing a hold that’s going nowhere, or a call to a client who has gone quiet. Make one person responsible for turning what the report shows into those actions.
Hotels have spent two decades turning rooms forecasting into a discipline. Function space deserves the same treatment. The hotels that bring events up to that standard, and look at events and rooms together, will make better calls on every group they’re offered.
Toby Marosszeky is Chief Growth Officer at iVvy, an event sales platform used by hotels and venues in 18 countries.
Sources
- IDeaS, “Six essential steps hospitality leaders can take to improve M&E performance,” Hospitality Net, November 2022. https://www.hospitalitynet.org/news/4113614.html
- FCM Meetings & Events, “Meetings & Events Trends 2025,” June 2025. https://www.fcmtravel.com/en-au/resources/white-papers/meetings-events-trends-2025
