Evolving to Meet Event Planner Needs

Etouches, a longtime player in the event technology sector, has rebranded itself Aventri in order to move away from selling individual products and toward a suite of services across the event lifestyle.

This week I spoke to executives at Aventri about how the event technology ecosystem has evolved, and how they expect their platform to evolve going forward. Check out the story below.

We also have the latest on Zurich’s redevelopment as a meetings mecca and a look at one of the more problematic elements of luxury hospitality.

If you have any feedback about the newsletter or news tips, feel free to reach out to me via email at [email protected] or tweet me @sheivach.

— Andrew Sheivachman, Business Travel Editor

The Future of Events and Meetings

Etouches Rebrands for Fresh Start in Crowded Event Tech Ecosystem: Aventri may sound kind of like an Italian resort town, but it does stand out among other event technology brands. It’s hard to brand a platform offering a suite of services in a sector defined by individual product offerings. We’ll see how this works out, and what companies Aventri acquires in coming years.

New Cultural and Business Hub Will Reshape Zurich’s Tourism Image: As we have seen in recent years, new multi-use developments can have transformative effects on under-utilized sections of major cities. Zurich is banking on The Circle to create a new reason for tourists to visit the city.

Is Luxury Hospitality Guilty of Cultural Appropriation? Education delivered directly from local communities, and informed by tradition, is what distinguishes immersion from appropriation. It’s the job of luxury professionals to facilitate the experience without adding the influence of their own lens.

Around the Industry

Opportunities for the 15 Ways Travelers Use Mobile: If there is a common thread throughout the in-destination journey today, it’s mobile. Even so, gaps exist in mobile usage between parts of the journey and the key players in each part. For those that are behind, it’s urgent to play catch-up.

Conferences Doing More to Reach Black Women: Diversity is a major problem for many events, which end up designed for (usually white and male) insiders at the exclusion of outsiders. Women across the sector are smartly taking on the effort to create conferences and other types of programming for people who are traditionally excluded.

Understanding Fortnite and the Esports Craze: If you want to understand why esports are exploding in popularity and your little nephew won’t stop talking about this Fortnite game, this is a good place to start. The growth of the game as a cultural phenomenon is deeply entwined with events surrounding the video game industry.

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Skift Business Travel Editor Andrew Sheivachman [[email protected]] curates the Skift Meetings Innovation Report. Skift emails the newsletter every Wednesday.

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