Show Daily 2018 - DAY 2

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Wednesday November 28th

DAY02

Time to be SMART Tighter event budgets and continued rising costs still pose a challenge for planners. But there are many solutions to meet these challenges, from technology to disruptive suppliers. Maybe we earned it after the painful crisis following the great recession but the growth cycle we are in has been exceptionally long - the second longest ever for the US economy for example. All good things come to an end at some point and in this case, even if no one is predicting a recession, all forecasts point to a lower growth rate for 2019 and a new normal consisting of permanent disruptions. If the challenge of meeting planning used to be mostly internal (creativity, coordination, production‌) and manageable, we are faced with three key difficulties which demand an increasing ability to source and manage providers and solutions in a smart way. Let’s examine them.

cast by American Express Meetings & Events (M&E), points to budget growths in our industry of under 1%. No crisis, but no party anymore. And these budgets are even more of a challenge when costs are predicted to rise: hotel consolidation means this is a market where sellers have much power and prices will increase by more than 2% globally. Doing more with less is no novelty for experienced planners and help is at hand. As the American Express report points out, disruptive providers offer planners plenty of new options to solve this complex equation.

Rising prices First, budget management will be a challenge. The 2019 Global Meetings and Events Fore-

Are your meetings technoequipped? Second, smart sourcing is increasingly important in technology, ranked by the two reports we present in this issue as an absolutely key success factor, both to improve attendees’ experience and to manage meetings in a smarter way. Finding, sourcing and integrating the likes of virtual reality, artificial intelligence and facial

From Russia with love

Cape Town goes for growth

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recognition into meetings are becoming a new must, and a complex one. We used to source hotels and buses, we now have to source AI solutions, go figure. Risk management is a reality Third, be smart and be cautious. In this environment, managing risk is as important as ever. GDPR is definitely the key conditioning factor of this year and a new challenge in an industry in which data management has often been seen as a secondary skill. And security (both digital and in reality), as highlighted in various presentations in the IBTM World Knowledge Programme, is a key responsibility for planners, who now have to become risk management experts.

Continued on page 11

Events acquire strategic value

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