The Incentive Club - more than 240,000 partners worldwide for meetings, Incentive travel and Incentive Marketing - said 20120 was a very bad year for meetings, incentives and motivation activities. The research involved a global audience of more than 8,700 partners in 57 countries. Compared to previous years, 73% had a drastic reduction for all marketing and promotional activities including conferences, incentive trips, premium travels and promotional campaigns. Covid 19, cost pressures, fewer delegates and smaller budgets changed the criteria of booking a venue or launching a promotional campaign. Looking forward to 2021 the most important factor influencing decision-makers is uncertainty about the Covid 19 situation and the global economic outlook, but 48% of partners feel confident about the sector's prospects and 24% expect to hold a better number of activities this year if venues and suppliers will be flexible enough and they will work more closely with agencies and meeting planners. Next year costs per attendee per day will decrease everywhere, but also group sizes will decrease in North and Latin America, Asia Pacific region and European countries, where we can preview the the worst-case scenario. Group sizes are actually expected to increase i n EMEA, North America and Asia Pacific region only during 2022 hoping that price inflation will be modest during the period. ++++++++ www.theincentiveclub.com ++++++++