How Much Time Are Event Planners Really Losing?

A Closer Look at Document Updates, Burnout & Smarter Planning for 2026

Event planning is repeatedly described as one of the most demanding professional roles across industries; with planners juggling multiple moving parts, long hours, and seemingly endless administrative work. Data suggests that event pros frequently work 15–20 hour days (or sometimes over 24 hours) during peak project cycles, often sleeping as little as five hours per night just to keep up with the workload (Cvent, 2019).

But beneath the long hours and deadline pressure lies a less visible problem: the cumulative time spent on manual updates across multiple documents and platforms whenever something changes. These are the hidden seconds and minutes that quietly turn into hours and days lost, time that could otherwise be spent on strategic work, creativity, or simply recovering and preventing burnout.

How Small Changes Become Big Time Sinks

Let’s break down some common planning scenarios and the real time they can consume without an integrated system:

1. A typo in a speaker’s name
   Manually correcting a name in the master document, then updating marketing materials, email invites, programs, briefings, and attendee apps can easily take 30–60 minutes or more just to ensure consistency.
   
   
2. A presentation time changes
   Updating the program schedule may require reformatting the master schedule, checking for downstream conflicts, notifying stakeholders, and then updating every output (website, app, printed agendas). One standalone program change in a spreadsheet can take 30+ minutes to re-align and re-communicate.
   
   
3. Room assignments change
   Updates across room lists, attendee communications, signage, and run sheets typically require manual work in each document and system.
   
   
4. Updating facilitator or MC notes
   These briefings often live in separate shared docs or offline files, meaning changes must be replicated by hand in every place they appear.
   
   
5. Updating the website
   Often involves re-copying content, re-formatting layouts, and quality-checking the public event site, frequently taking hours if not tightly integrated with the planning source.
   
   
6. Updating the event app
   Many apps require manual re-entry or off-platform edits and the app UX often has its own formatting needs that don’t match internal spreadsheets.
   
   
7. Rehearsal time changes
   Shifting rehearsal times often necessitates re-publishing calendars, notifying participants, and updating staff documentation.
   
   
8. Brief updates for attendees, speakers, exhibitors or sponsors
   Each audience group may require a separate communication, with varied content formatting and distribution.
   
   
9. Run of show / cue sheet changes
   These sequences are central to event day execution. An alteration often requires revisiting every downstream reference; printed materials, digital cues, producer notes, backstage briefings, and more.
   
   

Taken together, these manual updates, each seemingly minor on their own, can consume hours of work per event and significantly inflate the administrative burden. Industry benchmarks show that planners spend an average of 25–30 hours on planning a single event (WifiTalents, 2025).

The Administrative Load Behind the Scenes

Administrative and coordination tasks already claim a disproportionate share of planners’ time. Research shows that 60–70% of event planners’ work involves administrative coordination, documentation, and logistics rather than creativity or strategic design (EventHost, 2025).

When you combine this with traditional planning tools like spreadsheets or disparate calendars; which lack real-time collaboration, automated propagation of changes, and centralised version control, the problem compounds. Every update becomes a mini-project in itself.

This manual “update loop” is precisely why so many planners report long workdays, high stress, and limited work-life balance, not just because of the sheer volume of tasks, but because each need for precision ripples through every document and stakeholder group.

What Smarter Systems Change

Dedicated event planning platforms, ones built around a single source of truth, change the dynamic:

• One change flows everywhere: Updating a session time, venue, or speaker detail should instantly update all connected outputs; from program timelines to apps and websites.
  
  
• Real-time collaboration: Multiple contributors can work simultaneously without version conflicts or manual merge work.
  
  
• Automatic publishing: Instead of manually re-entering updates into every output channel, a unified system pushes changes live with one action.
  
  
• Less repetitive administrative drag: Many teams report saving significant time when switching to integrated planning systems, in some cases cutting planning administrative load by 30–70% compared with manual methods (Joi, 2025).
  
  

For an industry where planners may run five to nine events per year and experience intense hours during each event cycle, reclaiming this lost time isn’t a minor convenience, it’s a structural improvement that enables better work-life balance, more strategic focus, and, ultimately, better events for attendees.

Conclusion: Reclaiming Time for What Matters

Event planning involves extraordinary complexity; from vendor coordination to attendee experience design, from logistics to emotional labour. With the global event management market continuing to grow and evolve, focusing on innovative and unified planning systems isn’t just a technology choice, it’s a strategic necessity.

Reducing the manual burden of document updates doesn’t just save hours; it preserves mental space, reduces stress, and lets planners focus on the creative and human elements that make events meaningful.

As 2026 unfolds, event professionals who prioritise smarter planning infrastructure will have more time to invest in what truly matters: honing our passion and expertise, designing memorable experiences that connect people and creating invaluable impact.

Reference List

Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) (2025) Meeting, convention, and event planners. U.S. Department of Labor. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/business-and-financial/meeting-convention-and-event-planners.htm#tab-3 

Cvent (2019) A day in the life of an event planner: survey results. Cvent Blog. https://www.cvent.com/en/blog/events/a-day-in-the-life-of-an-event-planner-survey-results

Event Hotel Stay (2025) What administrative tasks take up most event planning time? Eventhotelstay Blog. https://eventhotelstay.com/blog/what-administrative-tasks-take-up-most-event-planning-time/

Joi (2025) Event Planning Software: From Spreadsheet Hell to Program Paradise in Half the Time. Joi Blog. https://blog.joi.events/event-planning-software-from-spreadsheet-hell-to-program-paradise-in-half-the-time 

WifiTalents (2025) Event planning industry statistics: data report 2026. https://wifitalents.com/event-planning-industry-statistics/