Is AI Actually Changing How Event Planners Source Venues in 2026?

For as long as sourcing has been a job function, the request for proposal has been the part planners complain about most: retyping the same event specs into a dozen venue portals, then waiting days for a hotel sales team to write back. Cvent's newest sourcing research set out to measure whether artificial intelligence has actually started to change that picture in 2026, rather than just show up in every vendor's marketing deck. Cvent partnered with Censuswide to survey 1,650 professional planners across North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and the Middle East and Africa, and the results show adoption further along than the usual conference-hallway skepticism about AI in sourcing would suggest.

How Planners Are Actually Using AI to Source Venues

Three in four planners, 75 percent, told Cvent they now use AI in some part of venue sourcing. That is a broad category, and the report breaks it down into the tasks planners have actually handed over: searching and shortlisting venues, drafting and optimizing the RFP itself, comparing bids once they come back, and automating the back-and-forth communication with sales teams. None of those tasks require a computer to walk a ballroom or negotiate a rate, which is likely why adoption climbed this fast. They are the parts of sourcing that were always mechanical, just slow, and handing them to software frees planners to spend the saved hours on the parts that still need a person: reading between the lines of a proposal, building the venue relationship, or walking the space in person before signing.

A Structured Process Still Beats a Freewheeling One

The report's more interesting finding may be that AI adoption and process discipline are moving together rather than one replacing the other. Eighty eight percent of planners say they follow a defined sourcing process for at least some of their events, and 97 percent of that group say the structure itself, not any particular tool, is what saves them time and money. Cvent put a number on that too: 42 percent of planners following a structured process report cost savings in the 10 to 30 percent range, and 40 percent report time savings in that same band. Read together, the data argues against treating AI as a shortcut around process. The planners getting the most out of AI tools are the ones already running a disciplined RFP process, and using AI to execute it faster rather than to skip steps.

Planners Are Also Widening the Venue Search

Sourcing is not only getting faster, it is getting broader. Forty eight percent of planners told Cvent they are now sourcing non-hotel spaces, cinemas, bars, golf courses, and similar venues, to build more distinctive events, with that appetite running even higher in some European markets: 57 percent in the Netherlands and 55 percent in the UK. That is worth pairing with the AI adoption numbers, because a wider, less standardized venue pool is exactly the kind of search AI-assisted tools are suited to: sorting through properties that would never show up in a planner's usual shortlist of familiar hotel chains. It also lines up with cost pressure in the same report: 72 percent of planners expect event expenses to climb by as much as 20 percent from 2025, and 69 percent expect their own budgets to rise by a similar margin, which is pushing more planners to look past the default hotel ballroom for value.

Cvent's Own Bet: an AI Shortlist That Explains Itself

Cvent is not just measuring the shift, it is building for it. At Cvent Connect in Nashville this July, the company unveiled more than 70 product updates tied to a planned multi-year, $1 billion investment in product and AI development, built around what it now calls CventIQ, an AI engine the company says draws on more than 25 years of its own event data. One of those updates, an AI-driven Venue Recommendations tool inside the Cvent Assistant, lets a planner describe an event in plain language, city, headcount, room setup, number of sessions, general ambiance, and get back a curated shortlist pulled from the roughly 340,000 properties in the Cvent Supplier Network, with each recommendation carrying an explanation of why it made the list. Cvent has targeted a third-quarter 2026 rollout, which puts the feature landing right around now, and the company says the recommendations are meant to improve over time as they learn from each planner's own sourcing history.

What This Means for Your Next RFP

If your team has not touched AI in sourcing yet, the data suggests you are now in the minority, and the planners ahead of you are not using it to cut corners, they are using it inside a structured process they were already running. Before you hand a tool your RFP, make sure the process around it is actually defined: what counts as a complete brief, who reviews shortlisted venues, how bids get compared. That structure is what the 97 percent figure is actually rewarding. And if your program has leaned on the same handful of hotel brands for years, this is a reasonable moment to widen the net. Whether you use Cvent's new assistant or another platform's version of the same idea, a wider, AI-assisted first pass through unfamiliar venues costs you very little time and, per this data, has a real chance of turning up something a manual search would have missed.

Key Takeaways

• Cvent's 2026 Global Planner Sourcing Report, based on a Censuswide survey of 1,650 planners across North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and the Middle East and Africa, found 75 percent now use AI for some part of venue sourcing.
• Planners lean on AI mainly for searching and shortlisting venues, drafting and optimizing RFPs, comparing bids, and automating communication with sales teams, not for the relationship or site-visit side of sourcing.
• 88 percent follow a defined sourcing process for at least some events, and 97 percent of that group say the process itself saves time and money, with 42 percent reporting 10 to 30 percent cost savings and 40 percent reporting similar time savings.
• 48 percent of planners are now sourcing non-hotel venues, rising to 57 percent in the Netherlands and 55 percent in the UK, as 72 percent expect event costs to climb up to 20 percent from 2025.
• Cvent unveiled an AI-driven Venue Recommendations tool at Cvent Connect 2026 in July, built on its CventIQ engine and a roughly 340,000-property database, targeted for a Q3 2026 rollout.

Data sources: Cvent, How Venue Sourcing is Changing in 2026: Data From 1,650 Event Planners, Cvent, The Big Shifts in Global Planner Sourcing You Need to Know, Hospitality Net, Big Shifts in Global Planner Sourcing for Meetings and Events, BizBash, Cvent's 2026 Planner Sourcing Report, Cvent, Cvent Unveils More Than 70 Product Innovations at Cvent CONNECT 2026, Backed by $1 Billion Technology Investment, Cvent Release Notes, AI Sourcing Platform (formerly "Venue Recommendations").