If you’re budgeting for your business’s next event, expect some sticker shock.
Event planners in NH say the costs have gone up sharply, from catering to chair rentals to audiovisual elements.
“I’m trying to prepare [people], especially my nonprofits, my corporate [clients]: ‘Hey, you’re gonna have to pay more, so you need to build this into your budget for next year,’” says Michelle Stewart, owner of DYV Events, an event-planning business with offices in Bedford and Little Rock, Arkansas. “I don’t want them to be blindsided.”
Rising costs are a concern for business event planners nationwide, according to a December 2024 meetings industry survey from the NorthStar Meetings Group and Cvent. Planners expected meeting and event costs to rise an average of 12% in 2025.
Stewart says it’s normal for the cost of an event to go up every year, but recent cost spikes were excessive.
An “astronomical” rise in audiovisual costs following the pandemic was one of the biggest factors, in part driven by hotels and convention centers having exclusive contracts with certain vendors, according to a separate 2024 survey by Convene, a publication of the Professional Convention Management Association. Planners also cited high labor costs, hidden fees and inflation in general as eating into event budgets.
Stewart has seen audiovisual production costs rise by anywhere from 25% to 50%. That’s typically one of the biggest and most important costs for the nonprofit fundraisers and other events she organizes, as poor sound can ruin an event. “You have to have production,” she says.
The cost to rent items like chairs and tables has also gone up, with some companies charging 25% more than they used to, she says. Stewart attributes some of the cost spikes to vendors having to pay more to attract workers. “Since COVID, it is hard to find good labor in our industry,”
she says.
In recent months, tariffs have raised prices across the event industry, says Nicole Mower, an event planner in Kittery, Maine, citing one local rental company that ordered about $100,000 in chairs from abroad.
“When the chairs went through customs, the manufacturer called and said that the tariff bill was $27,000,” she says. These costs will likely be passed onto customers in the form of higher rental fees. The same goes for products like wine, which is often sourced from overseas.
Finding Savings
To account for that uncertainty, Mower says she’s upped how much goes in the miscellaneous category when setting budgets with clients. It’s also important to scrutinize vendor contracts, to see if unexpected cost increases will be passed onto clients.
“It’s been difficult to project what future budgets will be for the events,” she says. “Our clients expect us to give them a decent budget, a good idea of what they’re expected to spend, and that can be a little bit more challenging now with the tariffs.”
Laurie Mantegari, the founder of event planning company Everyday Details in Hampton, says rental companies are charging more to offset their own rising costs.
“I’m seeing more admin fees coming out across the board,” she says.
To help keep costs in check for clients, Mantegari is now spending more time looking for lower-cost vendors or even taking on some tasks herself. “A couple weeks ago, I actually picked up rental items from a rental company, loaded them up and brought them myself,” to save an 80 cents-per-item setup fee, she says.
Planners in the Convene survey reported taking several steps to trim event costs without compromising the experience, including negotiating more with vendors, reducing the number of sessions, distributing fewer printed materials, and no longer offering all-day coffee.
Stewart of DYV Events says small tweaks like those can add up. For example: Don’t serve soda all day. “A Coke at a hotel, it costs literally almost $10 after a 25% service tax,” she says. “It’s a crazy amount.”
But it takes bigger changes to really make a difference in the budget, she says. For example, cost-conscious companies could host a lunch or breakfast instead of a dinner. “Nighttime events cost more,” she says. “Why? Because you have a dinner, and dinners typically cost more at a hotel or at a convention center.” An average dinner might cost between $49 and $75, compared to $35 to $50 for a lunch. Holding a daytime event also saves money on alcohol costs.
“When it comes to an event, it’s all about your per-person cost,” Stewart says.
Finding a venue that lets you bring your own caterer is another way to cut costs.
Stewart says some organizations may also opt for boutique events with smaller crowds or do several smaller events throughout the year instead of one
large one.
“I don‘t feel like our costs are going to go down anytime soon,” she says. “I do hope they go back down to where I thought they were going to go, like, ‘Hey, every year you can expect a 10% to 15% increase for food and service.’ I hope I can get back to that.” However, she fears these higher prices spikes will be the norm for at least “the next two years.”
