Sonia Michaels, head of business travel services and events, The Advantage Travel Partnership
Finally there is some optimism for the meetings and events industry, with even the largest of conferences being able to take place in the UK – all being well – from 21 June.
But will we suddenly see a spring back to the old ‘normal’ with large meetings, conferences and trade shows back on the calendar for the autumn? Let’s hope so. However, business meetings and events budgets are not expected to return to pre-Covid levels until at least 2023, according to research by the Meetings Industry Association, and in the meantime they're going to look very different.
Small transactional meetings will be the first to recover, followed by larger domestic conferences and events, with overseas events unlikely to take off before next year.
When it comes to the larger events, conferences and trade shows will for the next few years be smaller than they have been historically. They will also incorporate much greater and richer virtual content than in pre-Covid times when little thought was given to remote attendance and participation.
I'm speaking from experience, for as I look to re-plan our own annual Advantage Conference in Madeira – which has twice been postponed, in both May 2020 and 2021 – I’m investigating various different tech options that will allow us to deliver a truly hybrid conference.
This sort of set up, whereby delegates have the option to either attend ‘in-person’ as usual or join online as a ‘virtual’ delegate, is fast becoming the norm.
It’s something we never would have considered pre-pandemic, but it actually opens up quite interesting opportunities. Delegates and corporates will scrutinise the benefits of attending in person versus what they would achieve by staying at home. Audiences have swelled at virtual events, which in the past have been challenging to attract numbers, and the virtual component provides additional reach.
In the past, securing high-profile speakers for events involved considerable expense to the organiser and time out of their diary for the guest – two or three days for an overseas event.
Ironically, during one of our pre-Covid conference content planning meetings, we had a long debate about recruiting a potential speaker who didn’t want to fly to the conference because they cap their air miles due to environmental concerns. A suggestion was to have them live streamed to the event instead. At the time it seemed a bit radical, but now post-pandemic it makes total sense.
Event organisers will be able to secure an hour of previously out-of-reach speakers' time for live streamed appearances. It's cost and time efficient, and more environmentally friendly too.
As has been widely discussed, the impact on the environment of business travel, meetings and events is coming under greater scrutiny than ever, and this will influence organisers' planning decisions and delegates' attendance.
So too will the complexity of organising travel under current circumstances. The barriers currently in place, even as they ease, will be another deterrent to many people.
I personally would be relieved never to log in to Zoom or Teams again but I accept that virtual meetings will be with us forever. However I do expect the volume of them to greatly reduce as we return to offices, with the relentless stream of back-to-back virtual meetings many of us have experienced during lockdown hopefully consigned to the past.
During this period I’ve logged in to webinars and virtual conferences and although they continue to remain a great platform to deliver education and insight, they will not persist in the same numbers when live, in-person events become feasible again.
They are simply not the same as live events. I'm sure I'm not alone in finding that my concentration wanders or I get side-tracked by my emails and messages. It’s too easy to get distracted, as well as suffering screen fatigue.
Nothing can replace the personal contact of in-person events. Looking into people’s eyes to gauge reaction, bounce an idea, network, forge new relationships or discover a new product... Humans are social animals and they need to interact, engage and bond.
Winning new business thrives on personal connections. Who hasn’t started the ball rolling on a deal over post-conference drinks, or met an invaluable contact at an event that they wouldn’t have encountered otherwise? Those who meet remotely while their competitors meet potential customers in person are likely to be at a disadvantage.
The meetings, exhibitions and conferences industry is about to emerge from hibernation and face a world in which the criteria informing decisions about hosting or attending events has irrevocably changed. For better or worse, a blended approach of live and virtual will be the expectation for the immediate future – and probably even further ahead – as we all ease back into a new world.