On March 11, the World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) a global pandemic. Since then we have seen over 4 million confirmed cases, over 300,000 deaths, and industries all over the world brought to a grinding halt. Among the industries affected is the global meeting industry which relies heavily on not social distancing.
Tradeshows, conferences, and conventions require participants, presenters, and planners to travel to a venue, often stay in a hotel, and join their colleagues in packed exhibit and lecture halls for continuing professional education, networking, and business development.
The global meeting industry is responsible for US$325 billion in direct spending, supports 2.5 million jobs with $95 billion in salary and wages. The industry hosts some 1.9 million meetings each year, attended by 250 million participants.
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In the weeks following the WHO’s pandemic declaration, thousands of in-person meetings were cancelled or postponed. As the virus has continued to spread and governments work to contain it with varying success more meetings and conferences have been cancelled, affecting the livelihoods of audio-visual professionals, caterers, decorators, transport operators, destination management companies, exhibit support personnel and meeting planners.
If we have learned anything these past eight weeks, it’s that the future is not ours to see. But what can we anticipate for the future of in-person meetings? We can start by looking at how associations and businesses have responded to online meetings and by assessing the possible future of travel and accommodation.
A group of association executives asked recently about their experience with Zoom confessed that only 20% of them had every used the platform. That number is rapidly changing as they all have plans in the coming months to replace in-person committee, leadership, and educational meetings with web conference meetings.
Across society many of us have been dragged, some kicking and screaming, into the future. We are attending Zoom birthday parties, classes, church services, community meetings and dance parties. The level of adoption is unprecedented and is leaving us all more open to attending educational activities online.
This is removing one of the key barriers to widescale use of online meetings – the fear that participants wouldn’t show up. Once we are collectively over that hurdle there may be no going back, especially when we consider the cost savings of not having to pay for travel or accommodation. Some companies are using those savings to “send” more of their team members to conferences – registering three or more where they used to send only one.
The other important question is how will travel change both before and after there is a vaccine for COVID-19. In the short to medium term, travel is likely to involve stringent screening, sanitization of luggage and passengers, longer check-in times, wearing of masks – all with the risk of quarantine at your final destination.
Likewise, there is going to be a reasonable fear of staying at large hotels and visiting convention centres with people travelling in from all over. It is possible, maybe likely, that many persons will choose not to engage in non-essential travel, even after restrictions are lifted. Conferences and other meetings will be impacted significantly if that’s the case.
In the interim many associations and businesses are leaning into online learning, pivoting quickly to offer webinars and short meetings using Zoom and other web conferencing platforms. As that trend continues, and participants become increasingly comfortable with online delivery of continuing education, we may see a wave that never fully recedes – even if or when a vaccine is developed and widely available.
By then millions of participants will have attended hundreds of thousands of webinars, small meetings and conferences online; and Planners, associations, and companies will have become more adept at utilizing virtual meeting tools. We may not then see a compelling reason to go back to the expensive travel and loss of productive time to attend in-person meetings to the same degree.
The new normal will most likely be a mix of online education and in-person meetings with people attending in-person meetings mostly where hands-on training is required, networking is the main priority, or meetings are being held locally. We may not be sure where the meetings industry is going, but it is almost certain we are not going back to where we were.
Planners need to work to understand the tools that are available and select the right tools for their meetings. They should lean into the advantages of online platforms – increased flexibility, wider audience reach, more speaker and presenter options, and lower costs.
Questions regarding certification of participants, the facilitation of meaningful discussion and networking, assessment of learning outcomes, and how to provide value to participants, partners and sponsors will have to be addressed as we move forward.
The future of meetings was always going to be virtual, it turns out that future is today.