Client Panel

We live in an omnichannel world and the business events industry needs to deal with it. There’s been a lot of talk about how hybrid events were a bandaid to help get through Covid, but they’re a poor substitute for face-to-face meetings. That type of binary thinking isn’t serving the interests of the business events industry, clients and attendees. Today, our phones and digital networks are extensions of ourselves. Few people under 50 will disagree with that. Many business event professionals are continuing to advance hybrid systems, but there’s still work to do to identify profitable business models.

With the surge of business events coming back globally, there are significant capacity issues. Space and air service availability are key concerns for many destinations. It is anticipated that it will take until the end of 2024 to absorb all the postponed events during Covid. At the same time, air service to secondary markets has been diminished, causing added compression in first-tier cities.

Destinations need to prove commitment to environmental sustainability and equity, diversity and inclusion. Business event professionals are now demanding empirical proof of how destinations and venues are supporting efforts to lessen carbon impact and increase inclusivity across their entire supply chains. Event RFPs are clear about this and event professionals state they’re under growing pressure from their clients to show due diligence and verifiable results.

Streamlining and optimizing event design is now a mainstream priority. Coming out of the pandemic, even most conservative sectors and Boards have embraced shortening, simplifying and maximizing the “experience” at live events.

Global inflation and weakened supply chains are having an outsize impact on business events. Rapidly increasing costs for every element of a business event are impacting both client budgets and attendee choices. Expectation is that attendees who previously attended 4-5 events per year will now only do 2-3. Event owners are aggressively attempting to ensure theirs is one of those chosen.

Transitions across the business events industry make an already challenging job even more difficult. Ongoing staffing changes remains a huge issue in hotels, venues and other suppliers. New staff are often younger and inexperienced without the same level of decision-making ability. All of this has led many experienced planners to remark that: 1) many of their key contacts have left the industry; 2) the entire planning experience now feels transactional versus relationship-oriented or strategic; and 3) it’s simply not enjoyable anymore to work under these conditions.