When Plan B Becomes the Norm for Events

Two corporate planners shared that their biggest challenge isn’t just the new administration’s policies, but the constant state of uncertainty they’re forced to operate under.

“Uncertainty probes us to think about the impact on budget planning and our destination choices,” said Tavar James, vice president, global head of events at Forrester, during the Skift Meetings Forum 2025.

“Selecting destinations has been more difficult because you have to ask yourself additional questions and clarify and quantify the risk of any decisions that you make,” he said. “You have to have a Plan B, but you can’t have a Plan B forever. Eventually your plan B has to become a Plan A.”

The other alternative is to cancel, which is what Barbara Rohloff, global sourcing and procurement lead category manager at Prudential Financial, had to do for an incentive trip after receiving a destination warning from International SOS, her company’s security firm, three days before the event. 

Attendee concerns about traveling, visa challenges, and political unrest are all at play for the destinations where she plans international meetings. “Our destination list gets smaller and smaller each day because of what’s happening in the news.

“You just can’t predict in this environment, it’s so volatile,” she said. “Every day, there’s something that we’re faced with that we’re going to have to work with our partners to negotiate ourselves out of.”

One audience member told her story about having to redesign her event because the visa wait-times for her attendees from the Middle East are a year out. “They’re not even going to be able to get an appointment, much less the visa, before the time of the meeting. Half the room won’t be able to travel.”

Finding Solutions

For James, the biggest challenge has been with North America-Canadian tensions. “But for the most part, we’ve been able to navigate that.”

He is seeing more micro-events as a result of people not wanting to travel. “This uncertainty is actually pushing us toward what event consumers want anyway — smaller, more regional events.”

The other area of concern is the impact of the tariffs. Rohloff’s budgets are already getting hit hard, and her events are changing as a result.

“I’m negotiating hard on those food and beverage discounts and anywhere I can save the company money, like all-day coffee. Do we really need it? Do we really need donuts at 10 o’clock? There are so many things that we’re undoing that have always been the status quo.”

James worries about the impact of the current climate on his team. “One of my biggest concerns is what all this volatility and uncertainty are doing to them. The longer that you have a Plan B, it costs mindshare and effort. It’s stressful.”