How and why one organization made the call to move its U.S.-based event across the border to Canada—and whether other orgs might want to follow suit.

By Ernie Smith

It takes a long time to put together an effective meeting—often, even very small events are being organized months or even years in advance, with the goal of driving a large audience or deeper engagement.

Which is why, when there’s uncertainty in the news cycle that can affect travel plans, it can be especially difficult to manage. In recent months, the political climate has led many countries to issue travel advisories for coming to the United States, including Canada and some European countries.

Combined with economic factors that may encourage some companies to stop paying for travel, along with the loss of many federal jobs, signs are starting to show that all may not be great out there. Traditional event hubs like Las Vegas are reporting sharp declines in visitor and occupancy numbers, and a recent PCMA study found that three-quarters of event planners anticipated lower attendee numbers.

And for global organizations, international travel is a big part of attendance. The Event Industry Council’s Futures Landscape Report finds that more than half of respondents (55%) consider mobility to “either very important or extremely important” to the events industry’s future success. In one sense, our increasingly digital world helps with this. But what if the goal is to get everyone in the same room?

The answer, depending on how international your average attendee list is, could be worrying. For example, Skift Meetings recently reported that the International Society on Thrombosis and Haemostasis (ISTH) saw a sharp drop in attendance for its 2025 event in Washington, D.C.—with just three quarters of the expected 6,000 attendees showing up.

“We have never seen a drop like this,” said Thomas Reiser, ISTH’s executive director, in comments to the outlet.

For organizations with an international component, it raises a clear question: Is moving the meeting an option?

One Society’s Cross-Border Shift

That was a question that faced the International Society for Research on Aggression (ISRA), a scholarly organization, earlier this year. The organization, which was founded in Japan in 1972, has always had meetings around the world, but its upcoming 2026 world meeting was scheduled to take place in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

There was just one problem: The organization’s leaders, including president-elect Dominic Parrott, were hearing word from some ISRA members that they may not be able to attend.

“There were definitely varied reasons, including people who wanted to come, but had concerns about being able to get there,” Parrott says, with some citing university policies or visa challenges caused by their country of origin.

That sparked the decision among the organization’s leadership to conduct a survey of members. “We're just trying to take the temperature of our membership,” he said of the call. The results were not promising.

“The feedback indicated enough concern for us that we're not going to draw the typical amount of ISRA members that we usually draw,” Parrott says.

The organization’s world meeting, which takes place every other year, is ISRA’s centerpiece, so a decline in attendance from global attendees would be acutely felt. That created a challenge of where to move things next, something that, even with more than a year of notice, seemed particularly daunting. 

But some quick connections, particularly one from a past president, ultimately helped the society find a replacement venue that’s still in North America—Brock University, a public research university in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada. “Lightning struck in the best way,” Parrott says of the new venue.

Making A Tough Call

While ISRA presents a useful case study to analyze for international organizations attempting to navigate a tough climate, Parrott is careful not to paint the society’s situation as a template for other organizations. For one thing, the organization is working at a scale of around 400 members, most of which end up attending the organization’s event. If your organization has 4,000 members, your calculus might be different.

Also helping in ISRA’s situation was that they had more than a year to adjust. While that still puts them in a bit of a crunch to rebuild their event strategy, the event likely would have occurred with a smaller audience (and perhaps some virtual elements) if the realization had been made later.

But one thing that is clear is that however the decision is made, it should not be made lightly. While informing the need for additional research, ISRA didn’t make its call based on the general temperature in the room.

“I think we all kind of suspected this might not work. But we weren't going to just go on our intuition fully,” Parrott says.

But one could see the case looking increasingly compelling depending on the organization’s focus. Per Skift Meetings, ISTH has discussed keeping its 2027 event out of North America after the weak 2025 event, despite generally putting the event in the U.S. every other year. In the case of ISRA, future U.S. events aren’t off the table—but what is important is whether the event serves its primary purpose.

“You cannot have a strong scientific meeting, nor a strong meeting that builds professional and personal connections, if you don't have those people there,” Parrott says.