This has been quite a year as everyone can attest. I'm putting together what I think are some of the trends and cautionary situations that need to be front and center in dealing with the reality of our plight. Please think of this as a mirror of ourselves and our industry as we try to navigate our futures. Many individuals and companies are hurting, and confronting the future is a way of moving forward.
The Pause: COVID-19 has redrawn the entire events ecosystem, with most of the event industry on hiatus for 2020 and maybe most of 2021.
You Can’t Go Home Again: The event industry will never return to the same; for business events, “hybrid” will eventually be the standard. Event planners are adopting this new technology and are able to scale the number of attendees.
Engagement, The Final Frontier: Planners are struggling with engaging attendees on virtual platforms, making being a “collaboration artist” more important than ever. Digital tools, more than simple Q&A features, will digitize more engagement techniques that need to be mastered by organizers.
SMRF Rules: Business travel will be in major decline for at least a few years, so expect more local business, especially in SMRF (social, military religious, and fraternal).
The Great Outdoors: Outdoor spaces are more popular and will continue to be a favorite asset for event venues.
More Respect for Event Pros: Most large corporate event executives are being taken more seriously as the cultural officers for their brands. They have both the ear of the attendees at events and the C-suite executives who are asking how to engage employees and customers. This is a good sign for the continued influence of event organizers.
The New Office: With so many employees working from home, the office as we know it may be revolutionized with shared event spaces becoming the gathering spots for all organizations. Look for large, shared work spaces with meeting spaces, like Convene, to become more popular than ever. They will also be converting more raw office space to permanent showrooms in line with the approach of major design centers.
National Venue Networks for Scale: Look for the formation of venue networks that will draw hub-and-spoke events (larger meetings that are spread out over multiple cities with smaller, more intimate gatherings).
Technology Everywhere: Venues fully equipped with connecting technology will be the winners in attracting corporate clients.
Attendees Will Want More: Despite pent up demand to gather due to COVID, fatigue events will need to be more thoughtful and provide more value.
Masks Are Not Going Away: Having a medical partner will be a new norm, and we will be seeing both the hangover of the COVID-19 crisis as well as a greater understanding of how respiratory diseases can impact an entire event, so mask wearing will probably become a norm, especially during flu season.
A U-Shaped Recovery?: Remember the 2008/2009 time frame? We thought it would be faster, but it lasted until 2010. This one is projected to take even longer to recover, according to a recent BizBash survey. Most agree that there will be a U-shaped recovery, but everyone is generally optimistic in the long run.
The Disrupters and Cautionary Situations
We Need to be Ready Again: The most obvious future disruptor to the event industry would be another pandemic that causes cities to shut down and people to remain isolated. Post-COVID, event planners will start to design their businesses upon scenarios like this.
Know the Financial Health of Your Partner Suppliers: So many event suppliers are in such financially precarious situations that a weak vendor could hurt the successful execution of an event.
Growing Pains When We Add Hybrid: Hybrid events, at the degree to which they're being held, are new, so expect growing pains and technical issues connecting the virtual world to the live world.
The "Virtual Saves a Ton of Money" Myth: Because of the success of virtual events, many executives see less of a need to do in-person events.
Your feedback and tweaking of this list are welcome. Send me your feedback: [email protected].
