Anyone who is in the meeting and event industry already has their finger on the pulse of what’s happening, but it’s always good to look at some statistics on paper to confirm it. The more speakers know about future trends in the meeting industry, the better prepared they will be when a meeting planner calls. Or how to get the meeting planner to call in the first place.

According to the Meeting Professionals International, the industry is moving from a sellers market to a buyers market. For now, it still remains squarely in the middle, which is a much better place to be than strictly a sellers market, at least for speakers.

68.2% are optimistic about the industry in 2017, or at least expect no negative change. Half of government meeting planners and international planners expect conditions to be worse. They expect attendance at live events to rise in 2017, and a full 23% of organizations that hire meeting professionals to increase their employees.

Here’s some very good news for speakers. According to the Destination Hotels’ survey, 37% of respondents say they have more money to spend on meetings in 2017, 57% have the same amount, and 30% say they will be planning more meetings. The extra money may not be spent all on one meeting, but will be spread out among more meetings, giving more speakers more paid speaking opportunities.

One trend that is catching on is the experiential meeting. Hands-on learning is making a comeback, along with using different styles of learning for audiences who want their information in visual, auditory, and kinesthetic ways. Remember that when you plan your speech, and consider creative ways to integrate your sponsor within them.

Security is the number one topic on a meeting planner’s mind. According to the MPI report, “Forty-eight percent of respondents to the quarterly survey said they expected the costs of meetings to rise due to the need for greater security. Forty-four percent reported that they anticipated changes to the meeting and event industry due to the increasing prevalence and threat of terrorism. Cyber security is also a big concern for meeting planners.

Planning Pod, a top events blog, feels that niche events will become a hot trend in 2017. “events focused on smaller niche audiences to sub-events or tracks focused on select attendees to smaller sessions and audience sizes, events that are micro-focused will start gaining more momentum as attendees want more personalized experiences and seek out more intimate settings to learn and connect.” This is even more of a good reason for speakers to start honing in on their niche.

Building better relationships with the audience is going to become more important to meeting planners. More time will be spent getting to know who the audience is and what they want. As a speaker who is looking for sponsorship, this is important to you as well. If you’re asked to speak for free, hopefully the meeting planner will be willing to share some of that info with you so you can maximize your sponsor’s ROI. After all, sponsors are interested in who is in the audience, and not so much what you speak about.