Greg Oates

The Ferguson violence in 2014 rightly highlighted St. Louis' deep problems with systematic racism. While this is certainly no cure for that, the city's new coalition of tourism and business interests should inspire other cities to develop stronger public-private partnerships that benefit both visitors and their local communities.

The future of conferences and live events places a priority on bringing together thought leaders and influencers from more diverse segments, because creative audiences today want a mashup of tech, arts, and educational experiences.

Brands from Hilton Worldwide to Google are injecting more value into their events at every touch point, ranging from experiential culinary design to advanced event tech and content distribution.

A lot of hotel groups are providing healthy food options for their meeting groups, but attendees are still dozing off in the afternoon. So Hilton is pairing its meals with fitness and team-building experiences to try and inject greater energy and focus into meeting sessions. More research needs to be done on this.

Security, mobile device usage, the sharing economy, and positioning events as marketing vehicles are among the top challenges for event planners in 2016.

Generator Hostels is cleaving out an entirely new sub-segment in hospitality. The brand is geared toward young-minded people who want an affordable price point in major gateway cities like most hostels offer, but they also want a certain level of modern design and programming more typical of lifestyle hotel chains.

Maybe a silver lining to Zika's toll on Wynwood is that the district is getting a huge amount of global press that could pay off when everything is back to normal.

The meetings and event industry desperately needs to break down all of its silos so members in all of the different segments have access to a greater breadth of industry insight at a global level.

While everyone is looking to event technology to create better opportunities for attendee engagement, event organizers first need to free up the time and space in their programs for people to actually connect.

Few other Olympic Games in recent memory created as much controversy as Rio 2016, but all of the airport, hotel, and transportation upgrades bode well for continued tourism development over the long-term.