Meetings and Events Industry News

We're seeing a rise of conference programming around digital technology designed to engage mass audiences beyond the business tech crowd. This is redefining how meeting planners should design their own meeting and event content, and how they should identify their attendees.

BC Tech Summit is illustrative of a growing number of conferences worldwide that showcase advances in business technology by using simple language and interactive exhibits to engage next generation citizens and consumers.

Tahiti Tourisme's new video and marketing campaign deliver a solid impact, but it needs to ramp up the online experience as well to really sell the message to leisure travelers and corporate incentive travel planners.

2016 is going to be the hump year when sharing companies move from the cheap seats of the meetings industry to center stage.

More meeting planners are considering Airbnb as a viable accommodation option, based on new partnerships and programs that dramatically increase the value proposition for themselves, their clients, and their attendees.

San Francisco is at the forefront of showing how tourism bureaus, which rely on hotel bed taxes for funding, can collaborate with room-sharing companies that are in direct competition with hotels.

Companies from Airbnb to Marriott are implementing innovative operational strategies based on the need to be fluid and adaptable as the travel marketplace continually evolves.

The event technology scene is going mainstream, but there needs to be more research on the business case for event tech from non-biased sources to help meeting planners make smarter business decisions.

This mashup of leaders in travel, media, commerce, and IT represents the cross-industry synergies fueling the rise of the digital platform economy. It also represents the growing link between smart city development and tourism, which is going to explode in 2016.

Smarter, more advanced technology is entering mainstream discussion in 2016, so event planners and everyone else in the meetings industry should embrace that 100% and stop talking gibberish about how "meetings are about people." We know that, but people today use technology.