Skift Take
The meetings industry doesn't really have a cohesive vision moving forward. All of the individual pieces are there, so we designed a framework to bring everything together in a succinct unifying theory.
Every sector in the tourism industry has an updated strategic road map for the future aligned with modern day travel, digital, and business trends.
Except the meetings and conventions sector.
Hospitality, for example, has clearly shifted toward delivering on the demand for local, lifestyle, and design-driven travel. Tour operators and travel agents have reworked their business models to better customize services to the individual traveler seeking authentic culture. The cruise industry continues its push in the direction of higher luxury and experiential travel. Unsexy as it is, corporate travel and the online booking platforms continually refine their product and service offerings in terms of ease of use. Even aviation, the most commoditized of the bunch, has vastly improved efficiencies.
More recently, destination marketing organizations (DMOs) are rallying around the direction provided by Destination Marketing Association International's (DMAI) DestinationNEXT research, launched in full in 2015, to increase their relevance and impact.
But there is really no big game plan in business events today from an industry-wide perspective.
Every year, the major meetings industry organizations and other events industry players publish their annual meetings trend lists, but those all have a micro, compartmentalized perspective. The future of business events is not about Airbnb, Millennials, event tech, social media, short booking windows, moveable seating, or gluten-free banquets — at least not in terms of an overarching strategic mission.
So what is the macro, long-term vision for conventions? And how can cities, industry stakeholders, and conference organizers work together to design and implement that? What might that look like in the form of a new meetings industry manifesto?
Based on trends emerging among the most innovative cities and next generation conferences worldwide, one potential framework revolves around: Community, Collaboration, and Content.
Thinking about the big picture, those three pillars can be integrated to provide meeting design solutions to deliver on the business goals of meeting owners, the professional goals of attendees, and the legacy impact for host destinations.
As individual themes, those three pillars are nothing new. But together, and in that order, they offer the foundation for a new strategic road map in the meetings industry that's both relevant in today's digital economy and scal
