The new Zeitgeist for 2020: Virtual Meetings Industry

Postponing an event is less costly to our economy than outright cancelling the event.

We spend a lot of time thinking how to protect ourselves, our loved ones and our clients. At the same time we need to ensure the continuity of our job or business; in a blink of an eye we lost all in-person events; the embodiment of our industry.

"No one knows" is the most used answer to enquiries relating when the live events will commence. Following the recommendations from WHO and many government officials to avoid large gatherings during this summer, a majority of our clients' are rescheduling events from September 2020 onwards.

In partnership with the Business Visits & Events Partnership (BVEP) and The Events Industry Forum (EIF), davies tanner created a short survey across the UK events industry, designed to assist Venues, Destinations and other key sector suppliers in planning recovery activity post the COVID-19 pandemic. Further study includes feedback from 1490 meetings and events businesses and highlights the serious economical implications.

Industry Recovery Timeline

DMC's and hotel chains have temporarily suspended operations whilst working on introducing new cleaning standards, many offer additional services to help the society at large with the fight against the pandemic.

The domestic market will recover relatively quickly and perhaps even come out of the fray more strongly but the problem lies in the international market. Whilst general sentiment globally is that businesses will begin to pick up in the next six – nine months, respondents believe that the impact on the wider business events industry will be longer lasting. 50% of respondents believe that the industry as a whole will not return to any form of normality for at least 12 months, with only 27% believing that this could be achieved within 9 - 12 months.

Incentive Research Foundation (IRF) conducted a pulse survey during first two weeks of April with 250+ incentive organisers, majority (61,5%) stating that they are choosing to postpone.

Incentive trips originally planned for Q1 or Q2 have been postponed into Q3 or Q4, or into 2021 according to our respondents. Of the remainder, ten percent noted that the had not made any changes at the time of the survey, and one quarter indicated their program had been cancelled.

Popular keynote speaker on event trends and event innovation and editor in chief of EventMB Julius Solaris also predicts meetings industry to pick up during Q3 & Q4 as shown in the below graph published in his last week's blog.

The Rise of Virtual MICE Industry; digital events become the new norm during lockdown & travel bans

By now all of us have tested a variety of online meeting platforms and had a fare share of glimpses to our colleagues personal lives in a shape of cats, dogs, babies and other private objects.

Whilst we are learning the ropes of remote working; how to dress for online meetings and block distractions or take a break, we are gradually gaining acceptance that we will never fully go back to the pre-Covid version of events industry.

Thus MICE industry has always appeared to be a fast moving industry due to our relentless strive to wow our clients by introducing new event concepts, gadgets, glitz and by retaining our soft values with sustainable event modelling.

However, the truth is that it has been skin deep, as the client companies have moved fast, adapting new technology but amongst our own peers and clients we have still chosen to run our operations with tools that resemble something like the Ford T model in the world of automotive industry.

At the 4.0 subset of Industrial Revolution, the meeting industry has previously lacked behind in the innovation diffusion curve moving at the phase of the early majority.

Finally we are at the dawn of the 2.0 MICE version. Ironically, breakthrough comes under the mercy of flashing internet fallouts, travel bans, lockdown, and furloughs.

Digital Activities Ramp Up

The entire world may be isolated, yet we are connected by technology. Therefore our best option is to cultivate our relationships by utilising digital platforms. Scaling up is easier when we migrate from physical to a digital realm. People can attend from anywhere. It is well recorded that organisations that increase marketing budget during recession, gain more market share, it is fully feasible to transform live events into branded interactive digital events with Q&As that provoke a series of CTAs.

Now that we are truly adapting the digital age, simply by force, we desperately seek to instantly upskill ourselves by deploying new sets of virtual event management methods and virtual site inspection tools from the industry leaders such as Visualizergroup, Zoom, Hopin, AllSeated, 6CONNEX, VirtWay Events and ON24, that are swiftly taking over the market.

ON24

Hyatt, Scandic and Radisson hotel chains drive meeting bookings by adapting virtual site visits; We therefore offer meeting planners virtual site visits and co-host Visualizer Visit walk-throughs to convention centres, venues and hotels via shareable link to the detailed 3D virtual tour of the proposed meeting space.

Virtual site visit platforms enable remote planning of the event now that we are unable to do live site visits, besides it helps to refresh how the chosen venue layout works for the upcoming event.

Hotel Management article suggests venues could also add a video from executive chef showing footage from his or her kitchen whilst they are preparing new dishes for our forthcoming event F&B menu proposals. WildGoose organised virtual multi-city team building activities for IBM recently.

Virtual Expos: The next stage in 2.0 MICE Transformation

Following the decision to cancel IMEX Frankfurt, originally scheduled for May 2020; IMEX Group CEO Carina Bauer leads the way in the emergence of Virtual Meetings Industry with PlanetIMEX which goes into orbit on Wednesday, 6th of May, 2020.

Delighted that one of my favourite experiences during the live shows, the IMEX 5K funrun #imexstillrunning still goes ahead on 13th of May as everyone is prompted to do their solo run where ever we are in the world.

Online concerts and festivals such as the The Social Distancing Festival are temporarily replacing cancelled live events , similar trend is also picking up in the corporate market segment where companies are looking to create several forms of virtual spin off events prior to returning back to their live event series, OCP Virtual Summit, virtual product marketing festival, I/O Developer and Microsoft's Build are some of the larger ones taking place during Q2.

Several gaming industry solutions are sweeping into the virtual expo and virtual event world by organisers introducing avatars to replace the real life delegates, NATO already last year pushed these boundaries with their Virtual Expat Expo design.

Fully immersive virtual experiences allow meeting planners to create a mirrorworld populated by its own parallel universe of objects; innate and alive, passively and actively manifesting within its own scale and scope, as well as embedded as the digital dopplegangers of real world objects.

It is in this context that autonomous avatars will be to the mirrorworld what humans are to the real one. Artie’s Wonderfriend Engine platform allow brands and companies to generate their first wave of characters, and with the accompanying intelligence and narrative design to actively live within the avatar layer.

Back to Normal means Hybrid Events

Hybrid can mean both mixing live and virtual events together and mixing digital tools with manual processes in order to achieve new process improvements and capital gains.

Northstar Meetings Group highlights that due to the volatility of our industry during the recovery period; corporate and association event organisers will be consulting meeting industry professionals for an advise on the best locations and partners, but even more importantly, it will be critical to bring in event professionals with the right mix of technology, analytical and industry knowhow to manage the variables of physical meetings.

Tracking and keeping attendees safe, improving security, communication and retention of information, minimising costs and contractual exposure, as well as managing all other potential risks are all now considered basic requirements for organising live meetings.

As this digital transformation gains speed, Steven Potter, CEO of HotelMap, describes accurately the current atmosphere, comparing it to the Peter Hinssen's book "The Day After Tomorrow" where MICE businesses are trying to figure out how to stay relevant and in operation during and post Covid.

His innovation provides a solution to many of the challenging aspects of physical events. HotelMap Magellan, is a completely remarkable new technology that blends all of the world’s different hotel group and room block booking technologies into one incredibly efficient solution for event organisers and event venues to gain a new revenue stream, track delegate statistics and minimise risk from contractual exposure. Watch his video.

Convention centres especially should outright adapt this technology to their venues in order to drive delegate numbers up as we are moving to the new 2.0 version of the MICE industry.

In Steven's words; "get back to inventing great stuff for the future. Remember: it will never be the same as before. It will be better."

To conclude: Play is the ultimate form of research; let's stay open minded and new opportunities will present themselves. Let's embrace this new zeitgeist for our industry.

Feel free to contact me for introductions to the above solutions and let's come out of this recession with an improved set of skills and contacts!