How will the meeting and event industry recover from the economic devastation of COVID-19? Will face-to-face meetings come back? What is the new paradigm for the industry? How will industry leaders, and meeting professionals, provide guidance for the future of the business?
These are critical questions during these unfathomable times, questions that six association industry leaders will tackle during the World Education Congress (WEC) Grapevine, MPI’s signature education event, Nov. 3-6 in Grapevine, Texas.
“The Road to Recovery: Executive Panel Discussion” is designed to bring together a diverse group of leaders to candidly share their experiences during this massive disruption caused by COVID-19, says Annette Gregg, panel moderator and senior vice president of experience for MPI.
The panel will include Nan Marchand, managing director of the Meetings Mean Business Coalition/U.S. Travel Association; Jason Dunn, chair of the National Coalition of Black Meeting Professionals; Chuck Ghoorah, co-founder and president of Cvent; Susan Robertson, president and CEO of the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE); and Paul Van Deventer, president and CEO of MPI.
“We’re going to take the lessons we learned during this pandemic and bet big on our future.”
“I hope the panel inspires hope for our industry,” Gregg says. “Each of these leaders has taken this opportunity for broad transformations in their organizations, and these stories show the power of visionary leadership and of the human spirit. Through their stories, we will learn from their decision-making processes and what we can do as an industry to support each other.”
While an Oxford Economics study prior to COVID-19 showed a US$1.03 trillion direct spend into the global economy from meetings and events, Roger Dow, president of U.S. Travel, says the economic impact on the travel industry alone from COVID-19 could be nine times greater than 9/11.
Panelists, though, remain optimistic.
“The message I’d like to send to meeting professionals right now is this: The future of meetings and events is bright,” Ghoorah says. “In fact, the need to meet, even if it has to be through technology behind a computer screen, has never been clearer. The power of events has never been greater. Organizations have realized the incredible impact events have on their business. As individuals, people realize the importance of human connection.
“Times of crisis have the ability to tear people apart or bring them together, and the silver lining in all of this has been witnessing how our industry has really come together to support each other. I think we all recognized early on that we were all in the same boat and that we could either put our walls up and fight the current on our own or band together to determine where we go from here. Thankfully, we all seemed to have chosen the latter and that, truthfully, has been making a difference.”
WEC Grapevine: Learn more and regsiter.
Robertson says the meeting industry has already proven to be resilient and adaptive to extraordinary circumstances.
“It’s hard to see the forest for the trees right now, isn’t it?” she says. “We find ourselves forced to change plans and course correct on what feels like a daily basis in response to new information about this pandemic. We’re going to take the lessons we learned during this pandemic and bet big on our future.”
Marchand says her perspective is a glass half full and that she has learned being able to pivot quickly and being flexible are essential operating skills. She also says the collaboration within the industry has been critical.
Dunn bluntly says this is a time to “muscle up. Your future will require some heavy lifting.” He sees several takeaways coming out of the panel discussion:
· There is a road to recovery and it will take all of us to contribute.
· Leadership is complicated and we as leaders must lead with humanity and integrity.
· Business doesn’t equal people, people equal business.
It is this type of dialogue that Gregg envisions during the discussion, which is modeled after a similar panel during Global Meetings Industry Day in April.
“We hope that a look at our industry seven months later will yield some powerful insights into how our world has changed and what the meeting and event industry has done to survive and move forward,” she says.
