Recession puts pressure on budgets for business conferences

— -- When the commercial real estate market was booming, Margaret Bowles would attend conferences to schmooze with new business leads and complete continuing education classes.

But the attorney, who has a real estate development practice in Houston, will skip the main conferences this year — the International Council of Shopping Centers' convention in Las Vegas in May and the council's law conference in October. She can't afford to pay for them. The Las Vegas event, with hotel and airfare, would cost her $3,000 alone. "My client base has dropped considerably," Bowles says. "It's probably not worth my while."

Executives attending lavish conferences at top resorts have garnered headlines during these tough economic times. But the corporate travel budget crunch has had a more pervasive effect on those who can least afford to pay for trips: rank-and-file employees, administrative staff, entrepreneurs and small-business owners.

Companies have established more stringent administrative hurdles to get travel approved and are sending fewer employees to industry shows and association conferences. Self-employed practitioners, such as Bowles, are pinching pennies and assessing which trips render the highest return on investment. The result is lower attendance, more people paying out of their own pocket and people showing up for only part of the event. Some are making day trips to cut out hotel expenses.

About three-quarters of firms have restricted employees' participation in professional conferences and training seminars, according to a survey this spring by the Association of Corporate Travel Executives. About a third have eliminated or restricted reimbursing conference fees and are denying people time out of the office to go to them.

"Some associations will go under," predicts Susan Gurley of the travel executives association. "(People) think once the economy recovers, things will go back to normal. But there has been a fundamental shift in how we do business, and (the downturn) has accelerated that."