3 Trends That Will Disrupt the Meetings and Events Industry in 2017
Photo Credit: The HUBweek conference — positioned as "Boston's festival for the future" — illustrates the growing trend around the festivalization of meetings. HUBweek
Skift Take
The meetings industry is evolving beyond its preoccupation with event technology and the impact of Millennials over the last five years. The new focus for 2017 revolves around developing more multidisciplinary business events, integrating education and entertainment, to engage attendees in new ways on different levels.
The primary shift in the meetings and events industry in 2017 is going to revolve around delivering business events that engage attendees in more multidisciplinary ways.
For the last five years, the industry has been focused on two trends impacting meeting design strategy above all else: the rise of event technology and the emergence of the Millennial generation. There was growing consensus in 2016, however, that it's time for the meetings industry to move beyond its preoccupation with those themes.
Today, event tech is inherent in every element of the meeting experience pre-to-post. The concept of "hybrid meetings," combining live and virtual experiences, is meaningless in 2017 — just like the phrase "new media" that disappeared only a few years ago — because digitization has completely reshaped every industry.
"Event technology is not a force driving change anymore," asserts Julius Solaris, founder of Event Manager Blog. "It is an established pillar of ev
