A new year brings new challenges and opportunities. With the start of 2020 just a few months away, event planners will be faced with a whole new realm of obstacles when planning events.
We spoke to several industry experts to help you identify and navigate the challenges of the new year. According to our panel of experts these are biggest challenges facing event planning in 2020:
Providing meaningful experiences
“2020 will see more reasons to move toward experiences and events to market one’s brand or cause. Getting the right people in the room, interacting with one another and your brand in a meaningful way, is priceless. As retail starts to shift and change, and we see more tech and digital companies starting to emerge, it’ll become even more important to have a ‘five senses’ approach to events. What I mean by that is incorporating all five senses into the experience, thus creating a memory for the guests and building brand loyalty.”- Beth Lawrence, CMP, Chief Event Officer at Beth Lawrence Meetings & Events
It’s all about Data and Security
“Trends I see are increasing concerns of physical security (acts of terror, natural disasters) and data security regarding hacking of attendee data and conformity to GDPR. It’s also all about the data. I am surprised more companies are not doing deep dives into event measurements. I was doing that in 2003 for a Fortune 100. As we capture more data, we have to make objective, meaningful decisions to guide future event investments. I also see artificial intelligence coming into the picture. A presenter can be on stage face the faces of the audience being scanned to see their expressions in real time. The presenter can see on the confidence monitor can see the audience reactions and adjust their presentation accordingly have the best impact. In addition to measurement, I see ever increasing levels of technology being used to induce the wow factor.” – Harris Schanhaut, CME
2020 is the Year of Innovation
“I see 2020 as a year of innovation–from technology to cloud-based tools and apps that change the way we communicate and collaborate. For instance, we’re working these amazing LED Posters right now for directional signage. They are bright, lightweight, thin and portable. And, of course, they are reusable. I see the cost coming down next year. In addition, I saw a statistic today that the average number of connected devices in 2020 will be 6.58 per person. The growth and opportunities for planners will be exponential. We use multiple online tools for project management and they have come a long way in terms of their usefulness on a mobile device. That’s only going to improve at a rapid rate.” – Carol A. Galle, CMP, President/CEO at Special D Events
New Technology
“Technology is always evolving and there always new trends to discover. Some of the top technology trends that I’ve seen in the meeting industry are chatbots-artificial intelligence used as hotel concierge for hotel guests, facial recognition-biometric authentication, augmented reality, and virtual attendance which allows people to attend an events remotely. There is also been a significant growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) where you able to gather valuable data about your attendees more personal moments. Now of course with these top meeting trends there are challenges. With facial recognition the major concern is identity theft. Other challenges with these trends include security concerns, privacy, risk of data theft, and personalization.”- Chandra Major, CMP at Purchasing Power
