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What does the future hold for the meetings and conventions industry? According to Rohit Talwar, new business models, radical price incentives, deep personalisation and onsite transactions will shape the industry landscape in 2020. His conclusions are based on the findings of the ‘Future Meetings Experience’ online survey. The research was conducted as part a study on the future of meetings, venues and destinations. The founding survey members are the ICCA and IMEX, as well as Rohit Talwar’s Fast Future Research.

Here are a few key findings.

The Industry Today

The biggest current barriers to event effectiveness are seen to be the cost of attending, poor organisation and a lack of focus in the design.The quality of content, interaction, technology and networking were seen to be the main drivers of an effective and exciting event.

Events in 2020

Reasons to Attend - The Quality of Networking (76%) was the biggest single factor that would encourage delegates to attend events, less than 50% cited price as an influencing factor and only 1% said they would not attend live events in 2020.

Meeting Demand - 74% felt their organization would maintain their investment in live events in 2020, while 46% felt time and cost pressure might deter organisations from sending delegates and 59% felt their organization would be investing far more in alternatives to live events

Meeting Supply - 49% said there would be fewer but larger events, while 79% expected  a growth in smaller more specialised meetings and 48% thought there would be an explosion in the number of free or very low cost evening only meetings held in low cost venues

Business Models - 77% believe events will need to offer strong price based incentives to attract the desired delegates, 60% expect to see a rise in pay as you go / pay per session type models and 76% think there will be far more opportunities to conduct transactions at events

Event Technology – The most commonly expected developments are ‘Live video streaming to remote participants (75%), ‘A social network  before, during and after events’ (70%) and ‘All event content downloaded to our mobile phones’ (64%). Whilst more advanced immersive and experiential technologies were not ranked highly as individual developments, there was strong support for their potential applications when discussed subsequently in scenarios for personalization.

Personalization – 79% expect a totally personalized technology experience and 70% felt this individual customization would extend to areas such as food and seating. 93% believe that technology will enable capture and analysis of every activity, presentation and conversationSustainability – 70% say ethical and environmental factors will continue to influence the decision to attend

Convention Center Challenges – The greatest competition to convention centers is expected to come from ‘Schools, universities and colleges’ (63%), ‘Museums, galleries and libraries’ (56%) and ‘Meeting facilities in office buildings’ (50%)

Survey Details

• The online survey ran from November 2009 to January 2010. It was promoted to the networks of ICCA , IMEX and Fast Future and via a number of events industry groups and social networks.

• A total of 1125 respondents from 76 countries completed the survey.

• The three largest groups of respondents came from the US (22%), Germany (12%) and the UK (11%).

• The largest regional response came from Europe (59%) followed by North America (23%).

• The majority of respondents (76%) came from one of the sectors of the meetings and events industry.

• 19% of respondents were members of ICCA.

• A broad range of industry sectors were represented.

• The largest single group of respondents from within the industry were external event organizers and meeting planners (14%).

Rohit Talwar is a global futurist interested in future of emerging economies, travel, meetings and innovation, and he's also one of our most highly recommended keynote speakers on these topics. Download the full report here.