Events Industry Shrugs Off Trump Travel Order Restrictions

Donald Trump signed an executive order stating that federally funded travel for conferences had to be justified and approved by a “travel-approving official.” Cue the panic.

Except, in reality, there’s not that much, even from one of the most affected companies, Hotel Lobbyists, a conference site selection firm that specializes in government. The numbers at Hotel Lobbyists are stark:

• In 2024, Hotel Lobbyists worked on 467 meetings and events and had sourced 90 groups by this time last year
• Since January 20, 2025, Hotel Lobbyists has sourced 42 groups, down 60% in group sourcing compared to last year at this time
• 24 meetings/conferences have been canceled, representing about $750,000 of lost hotel revenue

And yet, Hotel Lobbyists President Brett Sterenson is pretty sanguine over the whole thing. What gives? First, he’s pretty sure that this is a pause, that those meetings that have been canceled were done so out of an abundance of caution rather than an order, and that the situation starts to normalize again later this year and into next—though maybe not for those serving agencies like USAID or anything with DEI.

“My hope is that when cooler heads prevail, later in the year, a lot of these meetings will come back,” told AMO. “I can’t guarantee that at all, but that is my hope.”

Still, he expects cancellations to triple before stabilizing, but even then he’s not panicking because:

• He has 22 months left to book through the end of 2026, and much of his business gets booked 90 days out or less
• The government’s fiscal year (October 1 to September 30) naturally creates tight booking windows
• Historically, government meetings quickly rebound after crises
• He believes the market will “plateau” rather than completely collapse  

From what Sterenson’s seen over decades in the business is that when one segment goes down, the other tends to go up—the government started spending after the 2008 Financial Crisis when the private sector shrank. The other reality that Sterenson’s experienced over the years is that bad times often follow good ones.

“Times of crisis usually come after times of great success for me,” Sterenson said. Indeed, last year was his best ever, double that of 2023, which was his previous best year ever. “The dust will have settled then, and folks will be able to travel again. So it’s more of a feeling of a pause, not necessarily a dramatic, ‘this is the end kind of thing.’ It’s the reason why I’m not panicking quite yet.”

No Sweat

Big events companies also don’t appear to be terribly concerned.

“Clarion are not reliant on government representatives being at our shows, so for us there isn’t really an impact,” Chief Executive Officer Lisa Hannant told AMO. “Clearly, we will monitor the situation and if there is a government employee that needed to be present, we would work with them to support as can.”

Questex Chief Executive Officer Paul Miller has heard that some colleagues are hurting, but his company has almost no exposure to government finances.

“We are watching closely as the secondary effect on hotels (an industry we serve) could be affecting their revenue but, candidly, we are not seeing and don’t expect to see any real effect of these initiatives,” Miller told AMO.

Society of Independent Show Organizers Chief Executive Officer Vincent Polito also said he’s not seen any cancellations thus far.

“It’s a situation that obviously has our attention. We are in near constant communication with our venues and our customers and a wave of cancellations at this point is an exaggerated term. Through our lobbying arm, Exhibitions and Conferences Alliance (ECA) we are monitoring the situation carefully,” Polito told AMO.

Heather Farley, chief executive officer at Access Intelligence, is hosting a city-wide event, Satellite 2025, next week. Farley told AMO:

Satellite has been hosted in Washington, DC for decades and while the primary coverage is commercial, we do have a government and military focused sector. To date, we’ve had no issues with speakers but have heard from some government attendees that their budgets have been cut, which is having a nominal impact on paid conference participation and/or travel. Exhibit hall ticket sales are up (these are lower-priced or qualified free tickets) and the fact that our government audience is largely local certainly makes government participation at Satellite easier.

Hotel Lobbyists’s Sterenson figures that people will eventually realize that meetings are critical, not just nice to have. His peers in the business have been checking in on him and like the aforementioned sources, have said not much is changing for them.

“People that are still doing fine, that have been checking in on me, because they know that my specialty is government, and they’re not feeling the same things, but I think that’s what gives me hope, that it’s not existential.”