Meeting planners anticipate that in 2010 their organizations will hold on average 2.8 percent more meetings than they did in 2009, according to a Meeting Professionals International and American Express FutureWatch 2010 survey of 967 respondents. While planners expect attendance to rise by an average of 4.5 percent year over year, they anticipate decreased budgets and less bandwidth with projected average expenditures per meeting declining 0.5 percent and the number of meetings each planner manages increasing 16.6 percent. Corporate planners project an average of a more than 25 percent increase in the number of meetings they individually plan.While planners expect their organizations to moderately increase their meetings numbers this year, some also expressed some optimism for industry growth. Twenty-eight percent of planners and 41 percent of 813 supplier respondents said they expect gradual industry year-over-year growth in 2010.Of the 967 planner respondents in this year's FutureWatch survey, 356 were from corporations, 263 from associations, 30 from government agencies and 318 were meeting management professionals.Originally published Jan. 25, 2010