John Mack

While lavish corporate events five years ago drew a negative stigma that executives tried desperately to avoid, new data show resorts are making a post-recession comeback.Resort bookings were up 33% year-over-year in the first quarter, according to data from Cvent, a cloud-based enterprise event management platform that can be thought of as the business equivalent to consumer travel sites like Expedia (NASDAQ:EXPE) and Orbitz (NYSE:OWW).Organizations spent on average 24% of their marketing budget on meetings and events in 2012, according to Cvent. Perhaps even more telling, companies typically spend about 1% of their revenue on these events, which for a company as big as Pfizer (NYSE:PFE), which reported revenue of $59 billion in 2012, can amount to hundreds of millions of dollars."The data shows people are back to doing business at attractive properties and resorts that will draw in more attendees," said Eric Eden, Cvent's vice president of marketing.  The business travel industry has...

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