By Alisa de Gaspe Beaubien, CEO, Groupize
Small and internal meetings have become one of the fastest-growing segments of enterprise travel—and one of the most overlooked from a management and technology perspective. These meetings are increasingly central to how teams collaborate, build culture, and move initiatives forward. Yet most organizations still lack a framework for managing them effectively.
Before the pandemic, these types of meetings were often treated informally—quick team gatherings, working sessions, or department offsites booked ad hoc. But as hybrid work models took hold and distributed teams became the norm, there’s been a measurable increase in demand for in-person connection. What hasn’t kept pace is the infrastructure to support those needs: policy, process, budgeting, and tools.
This gap has forced many organizations to reevaluate how they support internal meetings—and who owns that responsibility. It now touches HR, finance, travel, and procurement. But in many cases, there’s no single owner and no defined process. Only 32% of organizations report having a formal policy in place for small and internal meetings, according to a recent BTN survey, while 20% are actively working on one.
The need for visibility and control is growing. Finance teams want to track spending, security teams want to protect against risk, travel managers want to consolidate supplier relationships, and sustainability leaders need better data to measure their impact. That’s difficult to achieve when the meetings fall outside the scope of existing strategic meetings management programs (SMMPs), which were designed for large, complex events with professional planners—not recurring team meetings or one-off project gatherings.
For years, there were limited technology solutions designed specifically for this category. That’s changing. A new wave of tools—many of them lightweight and intuitive—now enable distributed teams to book in-policy meetings without requiring support from an event planner. These platforms offer workflows for approvals, budgeting, sourcing, room blocks, and reporting—all tailored for the needs of smaller, decentralized meetings. This shift is essential. Meeting owners aren’t always travel or meeting professionals, and they’re not going to navigate legacy systems or manual processes. They need tools that work the way they do: fast, flexible, and integrated.
The opportunity extends beyond automation. With the right platform, organizations can unify meetings and travel data to gain a clearer picture of spend, supplier usage, and policy compliance. That means better leverage in supplier negotiations, more accurate forecasting, and measurable progress toward sustainability goals.
It also means that meetings data—which has long lived in spreadsheets or outside systems—can now be incorporated into broader business decisions. Whether it’s tying meetings activity to employee engagement, tracking use of preferred properties, or surfacing unused room nights, the insights are there for those who are collecting the right information at the point of planning.
Some companies have dedicated resources to this work, hiring full-time specialists to manage travel and meetings tech stacks. Others are starting small—trialing tools or using self-serve solutions to build a baseline. Both approaches are valid. What matters is getting started and proving value.
The management of small and internal meetings is no longer a side conversation. It’s a core part of how modern organizations operate—and it deserves the same level of strategy, governance, and innovation as every other category of business travel.
How Groupize.ai Fits In
Groupize.ai was purpose-built to solve this exact challenge. Our AI-powered platform simplifies the end-to-end process of managing small and internal meetings—without adding friction. We automate policy controls, centralize data, streamline approvals, and make it easy for employees to plan compliant meetings in minutes, not days. By bringing meetings, travel, and guest logistics into a single workflow, Groupize.ai helps organizations reduce risk, improve visibility, and drive adoption at scale.
This isn’t about replacing people—it’s about enabling better decisions, better experiences, and better outcomes with fewer resources. That’s what modern AI meetings management should look like.
Ready to take control of small and internal meetings?
Learn how Groupize can help you centralize processes, cut costs, and gain visibility—without overwhelming your team. Visit groupize.ai or reach out for a demo.
