Each quarter, we looked at the Middle East and how it was recovering. At the end of 2022, we revisit these metrics and compare to Asia Pacific and the United States.
NB: This is an article from Knowland
For the full year, the Middle East is recovered at 154.2% compared to 2019. As a contrast, Asia Pacific is recovered at 68.2% and the United States at 77.8%.
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Looking at corporate events only, the numbers change slightly but are still strong. The Middle East is at 141.1% recovery, APAC is at 68.5% and the United States at 74.8%.
The Middle East continues to be the only region where recovery is ahead of 2019 metrics for the full year. However, APAC and the United States did have strong performances in Q4. APAC achieved greater than 100% recovery in both November and December. The U.S. achieved greater than 100% recovery overall in November and December. Additionally, it also achieved 100% recovery in November. There was a minor dip in December for corporate events, but overall events were ahead of 2019 for December.
Diving into the numbers, there are pockets where the recovery is not quite as robust. Looking at the top 10 industry segments in 2019 provides a clearer image of this. While the region, as a whole, sits at 141.6 percent recovered, the top 10 segments from 2019 are a bit lower at 125.6 percent.
Seven of the top 10 segments in 2022 were fully recovered to 2019. Those segments (Travel, Training/Education, Consulting, Technology, Manufacturing, Healthcare, and Marketing/Advertising) are recovered at 164.4 percent vs. 2019. Additionally, Travel now makes up 15.9 percent of overall corporate business compared to 8.5 percent in 2019.
For the remaining segments (Pharmaceutical/Biotechnology, Financial/Banking, and Oil/Gas/Energy), the recovery metric is at 84.5 percent, decidedly lower than the region and the other segments. Additionally, in 2019, these segments comprised 31.1 percent of overall corporate business and now they only represent 18.6 percent.
