The Exhibitions & Conference Alliance, an advocacy voice in Washington, D.C. for meetings and business events, has announced the issues it will be focusing on to support or fight against legislation that would effect the industry.
“In 2025, the ECA will be committed to ensuring that the U.S. business and professional events industry remains competitive for the future,” said Hervé Sedky, president and CEO of Emerald Holding, and Chair of the ECA board of directors. “The ECA looks forward to working with policymakers in Washington, D.C., and nationwide to advance our 2025 public policy priorities. These efforts will strengthen our industry’s competitiveness, continue driving economic growth, support job creation, and empower small businesses across the country for years to come.”
The organization works with the government to improve the overall competitiveness of the industry, which will employ 2.63 million Americans and drive $426.1 billion in spending nationwide in 2025, according to an ECA moddel based on the Events Industry Council's 2023 Global Economic Significance of Business Events study. From a tax code that incentivizes the growth of our industry's small businesses, to policies that help the United States attract more international exhibitors and attendees, the ECA strongly encourages policymakers to adopt the measures below that will strengthen the industry's competitiveness, as well as its ability to drive economic growth, support job creation, empower small businesses and help solve our most urgent societal challenges going forward.
Laying out the industry's needs
Among the ambitious issues the ECA is tackling are as follows.
Enhancing competitiveness through growth-focused tax policies with federal tax reform that is:
- Pro-growth and ensures a competitive business tax rate;
- Pro-investment and maintains current private-equity tax treatments;
- Pro-impact, safeguarding the nonprofit tax status of associations and association events; and
- Pro-workforce development by expanding 529 plans to cover certifications.
The organization also will a work to prevent harmful state and local tax policies that would unfairly target the industry.
Creating new workforce pathways to ensure industry competitiveness by:
- Supporting government policies to help attract and train the industry's future workforce; and
- Expanding Pell Grants to cover high-quality, shorter-term skills training.
Growing international travel to increase the global competitiveness of the United States by:
- Continuing to reduce visa wait times while modernizing the visa processing system;
- Opposing adoption of any U.S. inbound international travel restrictions; and
- Strengthening public-sector programs that attract (and retain) international events to the United States, and that help recruit international attendees to U.S. events.
Leveraging smart decarbonization for long-term and competitive sustainability advantage by:
- Encouraging smart sustainability and decarbonization initiatives by federal entities that ensure the right balance between environmental aims and industry feasibility.
Supporting future growth through a competitive operating environment by:
- Securing government support for event cancellation insurance going forward;
- Increasing music-licensing transparency and stopping anticompetitive behavior by rights holders;
- Establishing a pro-innovation federal privacy statute that harmonizes existing state privacy laws;
- Blocking state and local efforts to restrict the freedom of operations of business events; and
- Ensuring favorable standardization and classification efforts.
“Advocacy is critical to ensuring that our policymakers support the industry on the issues that matter,” said Marsha Flanagan, M.Ed., CEM, president and CEO of the International Association of Exhibitions and Events, and copresident of the ECA. “With so much at stake in 2025, we need everyone across the industry to get involved and make their voices heard. Together we can make an impact.”
