Conference Budget Planning in 2025: Why Last Year’s Numbers No Longer Work

In the world of conference and event planning, there's always been an unspoken rule: "Just start with last year's budget." But if you're planning a conference in 2025, that rule is officially obsolete.

Between supply chain volatility, post-pandemic cost increases, and ever-evolving attendee expectations, the pricing landscape for conferences has fundamentally changed. You can't simply copy-and-paste last year's numbers and hope for the best anymore — and if you try, you might find yourself explaining massive overruns to very unhappy stakeholders.

The good news? We recently sat down with industry experts Lee Avery and Colleen Ortiz of Nth Degree on Pholeo's Event Logistics Lab. They shared a wealth of ideas and strategies to create smarter, more adaptive conference and event budgets, helping planners navigate this new normal with confidence.

Why Your 2024 Budget Templates Won’t Save You in 2025

"You can't judge or anticipate that repeat event to be the same anymore," shared Colleen Ortiz on the Event Logistics Lab podcast. "You have to approach each conference as a new conference."

Lee Avery echoed the same sentiment, noting that historical budget patterns are helpful for context, but "you should always assume new variables will impact the costs" — everything from labor shortages to increased health and safety measures that weren't even factors a few years ago. 

Hotels, convention centers, and catering partners are refreshing their menus and pricing structures far more often than they did pre-2020. In fact, many now have built-in clauses allowing for price adjustments as close as 30 to 90 days before an event. While these clauses may have always existed, we are seeing them activated more frequently now than ever before. 

If you are a planner who has relied on your experience to ballpark pricing, it may be worth quickly double-checking current coffee prices and doing some quick math to update your estimates. 

How Inflation and Supplier Shifts Are Rewriting the Rules

It's not just that costs are going up — it's that they're going up in unexpected places.

In her conversation with us, Colleen Ortiz explained how even simple necessities like water stations are significantly more expensive now: "You're purchasing filtered water, you're adding labor to manage them, cups, sustainability programs... it adds up."

Meanwhile, boxed lunches — once considered a cost-effective option — are facing sharp price hikes. "Nine times out of ten, it's a third-party company assembling those boxed lunches, and there's very little room for flexibility," Colleen noted.

This means that the strategies we once thought would save us money may now be impacting our budgets in the opposite direction. I'm not suggesting we revert to bottled water, but it’s worth discussing how platters of halved sandwiches could be a more budget-friendly and sustainable solution compared to boxed meals.

The key takeaway? Even "small" line items are subject to large, often unpredictable increases.

Building Resilient Budgets: What Planners Should Be Doing Now

When it comes to budgeting for 2025 events, the old "copy last year" model needs to be replaced with:

• Zero-based budgeting: Build each budget fresh. Start from what the event needs now, not what it cost last year. This approach will help prioritize the goals of the conference and align the spend. 

• Real-time vendor updates: Ask your venue and suppliers how often their pricing adjusts — and request quarterly refreshes during your planning timeline.

• Contingency planning: Lee Avery recommends setting aside "at least 2 to 2.5%" of your budget as a built-in contingency — but not necessarily listing it separately in your visible budget.

• Bucketizing costs: Rather than doing a flat "cost per head" calculation, Lee breaks budgets into buckets: attendees, staff and crew, executives, vendors, etc. Each bucket has its own needs, risks, and success metrics. 

• Leverage Software: Using tools like Pholeo can help you plan smarter by allowing you to easily run budget scenarios, create budget areas, and quickly gain insight into costs by automatically calculating taxes and service charges. 

Adaptability is now a core budgeting skill for conference planners.

How Early Conversations Can Save You Thousands

One of the clearest lessons from both Colleen and Lee: start the conversations earlier. With everyone.

"You have to be asking your catering partners early: When are your menus going to change? What prices are flexible?" Colleen emphasized.

Lee added that involving your facility partner when negotiating contracts can yield major savings, such as securing staff meal pricing at attendee rates, or negotiating bulk discounts on catering packages.

And equally important? Bringing your internal stakeholders along for the ride. Explain early and often that per-person costs from 2024 are not realistic baselines for 2025. Your ability to manage expectations will directly impact how successful your event feels — and how much financial pressure you experience onsite.

It doesn't have to be a "no" for everything. Working with your stakeholders ensures that what you escalate to a "yes" truly matters. Ask your stakeholders: does everyone eat the piece of fruit in their boxed lunch? (Usually not.) What if we moved toward a la carte pricing for the fruit we know will be consumed, freeing up more budget for the Dubai Chocolate action station at the welcome reception? Your attendees won't remember the apple they threw away, but they will remember that they got to try the hottest food trend of the year at your event.

Want to watch the full conversations with Lee and Colleen? Click the buttons below. 

Want to learn more about how you can quickly and accurately create budgets for an upcoming program? Request a demo of Pholeo here: