Before the economic crisis, the meetings and events industry was contributing some £22bn a year to the UK economy; 80 million people were attending 1.37 million meetings and conferences; 67% of UK office workers travelled to at least one meeting per week. And if that looks big, according to StarCite, meeting spend worldwide reached as much as $300bn – it leads to the suspicion that people were having meetings about meetings.

Despite these figures – which have somewhat reduced over the past 18 months – meetings spend is justifiably described as the final frontier of unmanaged travel spend. Part of the problem is fragmentation – numerous people in numerous departments are booking meetings and events and none of the information is centralised.

This is partly because many meetings bookers think the job will be taken away from them if the information surrounding their events is captured centrally and, of course, there are those who don't want their spend scrutinised. So there are many obstacles to overcome.

However, if done well, tackling meeting spend can provide huge amounts of value. First, says Ian Flint, Managing Director of Consultancy Inform Logistics, define your meeting. "There is such a diverse range of ideas under one group. What are meetings? HR, sales, a locally booked hotel or a major event? And if it is a major event, who owns it – travel? marketing?," he asks.

A system must also be set up to capture data, as a lack of information, means a lack of control. "To manage meeting spend you need some basic tools that can tell a story. Booking history, average rates by geographical location, average rates by venue and average rates by group and an understanding of the seasonality of events," says Managing Director of Conference Care Andrew Deakin.

As an alternative to tools, ensure all meetings and events are booked through one person. This individual could also have a credit or charge card, so that all spend is consolidated.

Next, find out where you are spending money and analyse that information to choose preferred suppliers. "I would ideally need a year's worth of data behind a single client to be able to negotiate with venues," says Alan Newton, Group Supplier Relations Manager for Grass Roots.

By that he means, "The total number of events, total number of delegates and average number of delegates per event." Preferred suppliers can be written into booking tools to ensure compliance.

There are two ways to get buy-in to this. First, make sure it is directed from the top: if the Chief Executive and MD are quietly doing their own thing, no one else has any incentive to comply. And secondly, communicate broadly and clearly what you are hoping to achieve and how everyone can participate in that.

If no one has time to do venue finding internally, people will start to do their own thing and all MI and savings are lost, so it can be worthwhile outsourcing part or all of the process. In addition, look at internal space:  "It is better managed externally because of the peaks and troughs of demand," says Grass Roots' Newton. "Companies can save up to 25% on the annual cost of running their own space."

Finally, and potentially most crucially, question the need to travel to meetings at all.