And this has implications for the meetings industry, according to Paul Brown, Hilton Worldwide president of global brands and commercial.

Delivering the keynote address at the opening of ITB Asia, Brown said hotels needed to embrace technology and use it to change the type of meetings offered.

It was also essential he said, for hotels to improve how meetings were sold and marketed. Social media had a role to play.

“It is important how we sell the experience and the value of meetings,”  he said.

“We must have confidence in the value of the product and the services we offer at our hotels, and confidence in the long-term viability of our industry.”

Brown said research indicated that 85 percent of business executives still preferred face-to-face meetings while other data supported the view that it was a competitive disadvantage for companies to cut back on face-to-face meetings when their competitors were not doing so.