The return of face-to-face meetings and the recovery of the business meeting industry in the midst of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic will likely be a number of small steps forward in the early months of the new year.
Take, for example, the 50 meeting professionals who traveled to the new CAESARS FORUM in Las Vegas for three days to participate in PCMA’s Convening Leaders 2021 annual conference, a mostly digital event anchored in Singapore. Six participating locations, such as CAESARS FORUM, linked to the broadcast but had the opportunity to include live attendance based on local guidelines and to customize content. The attendance cap in Las Vegas aligned with the state’s current live attendance mandate.
Sherrif Karamat, CEO and president of PCMA, said Thursday that 3,500 participants from 46 countries and five continents participated in the conference. He said there were 300 live attendees in Singapore. Last year, the conference took place before the COVID-19 pandemic and attracted a record attendance of 5,300.
Karamat said he believes industry recovery is coming, but with changes. He said his association’s research showed that face-to-face events would begin to ramp up in the second half of 2021, but that any movement toward a more substantial recovery would be sometime in 2023.
“Recovery is happening, and things are happening,” he said. “The fact that we are engaging is good…getting people back to work and keeping people safe, recovery is on its way.
“But I want to emphasize this, our reality tomorrow is not going to be what was pre-COVID. We cannot expect to go back to what was. We all have changed. I would venture to think we don’t know yet how all of us have changed. We’ve got to understand that. While recovery will be robust, and I think our economies will be better, it will be different. Our responsibility, all of us as leaders, is how we help people face that new reality because it’s not going to be easy.”
Karamat said the Convening Leaders conference was a challenge on a number of fronts especially with health care guidelines changing in various locations, sometimes on a daily basis.
“There were things in our control…and things out of our control,” he said. “We had to focus on what was in our control and, from that perspective, we would do an omnichannel event. There were a lot of learnings. It was a massive learning curve for all of us.”
The team at Caesars Entertainment can attest to that. The challenges resulting from the current state mandates on meeting size required significant planning, all with a goal of keeping attendees safe. That forced the Caesars team of Reina Herschdorfer, director of marketing, national meetings and events, and Stephanie Byrd, marketing specialist, to develop multiple plans.
In addition to following established protocols for social distancing, wearing masks and temperature checks upon entering the facility, they also studied walking traffic patterns within CAESARS FORUM to ensure proper spacing for the 50 people allowed in the building.
The group expanded to about 75 including guests and staff for off-site food and beverage experiences and visiting local venues, including the Neon Museum, the Mob Museum and the newly opened Circa Hotel and Allegiant Stadium, home of the NFL’s Las Vegas Raiders. Some of the experiences were split into different days, with part of the group going one night, the other group going a second night.
With MPI’s World Education Congress (WEC) planned for June at CAESARS FORUM, the PCMA event and last October’s Annual Partner Meeting from Conference Direct—the first event at the facility—are helping the Caesars Entertainment team not only break in the new building, but also gain a greater understanding of planning around COVID restrictions.
“I have learned that we can plan for months in advance and that it’s good to have a lot of time to plan,” Herschdorfer said. “But we’ve learned that even with a short amount time, can still plan a good event. We just make decisions much quicker and move faster. Even though it is stressful, you can do it.”
She emphasized that that ability to adapt quickly will be an important skill as meetings and events, such as WEC, grow in scope and size.
