Meetings and Events Industry News

After a failed initial public offering, PSAV is now in the hands of Blackstone. Time will tell if the move ends up increasing costs for event professionals as PSAV inevitably looks to expand its scale in the marketplace. The competition between hotels selling their own offerings and companies like PSAV will be fascinating to watch.

In its rebrand to the American Society of Travel Advisors, ASTA wanted to keep the acronym as is. But is "Society" really a gateway to the future? The success or failure of the move may hinge on the effectiveness of the organization's new marketing campaign. We can't wait to give it a look.

Roll up, roll up, roll up! No, that's not a lyric from a song by either The Struts or Fitz and the Tantrums. That's instead the call of Blackstone, which has bought events tech provider PSAV with a likely plan of creating more roll-up mergers with similar vendors.

There's a lot of buzz around emerging technologies like augmented reality and facial recognition. Realistically, though, it's too early for these things to really catch on, but companies like Cvent want to be ready to deploy new products when and if they do.

Cvent wants to be opportunistic about adding emerging technologies like augmented reality to its broad stable of products for event professionals. For the time being, the focus is on making its products easier to use and reducing the fragmentation that can make life more complicated for its customers.

Planners are figuring out ways to lessen the impact of commission cuts, while many hoteliers in competitive markets have explored other ways to incentivize planners to book at their property. Creativity is necessary for planners to avoid a major financial hit with the industry now stacked against them.

The third party commission cuts by a growing number of hotel companies are emerging as planners’ biggest challenge in 2018. That’s followed by the current sellers’ market but, somehow, the cuts feel personal.

During our recent webinar, we discussed disruptions within the meetings and events industry that are forcing hoteliers to rethink how they attract planners. Register to get the recording!

Where Cvent leads, the rest of the event technology sector follows. That said, no one has yet to win out when it comes to emerging technologies like augmented reality and better solutions for sourcing small events.

Cvent wants to make it easier for customers to use a variety of its tools, in order to leverage the wide spectrum of data it collects on attendee behavior. Owing to the complexity of its platform, this remains a work in progress.