All posts by Patrick Simms

While convention centers were deprived of their usual influx of groups since the onset of the pandemic, many approached the downtime very productively.

A significant benefit of introducing wellness programs into events is improving attendees’ experiences by stimulating their mental and physical health.

The face-to-face attendee experience is generally regarded as superior to virtual, particularly for meetings where networking and relationship building are among the objectives.

Regular attendees are the “bread and butter” of any convention. Their consistent participation keeps attendance numbers where they need to be each year. But each one of these familiar faces was once a new face — a first-time attendee.

As long as an event involves valuable electronic data — whether on organizers’ devices or attendees’ — it is a potential target of cybercriminals.

Determining whether in-person or virtual is the best format for a given meeting will become an integral part of planning, at least more so than in the past.

The region’s destinations, resorts and meeting venues have been very proactive in implementing the needed health and safety measures to help the industry regain its footing.

The priority with the return of face-to-face meetings is understandably their safety, more so than their sustainability. Planners are first and foremost concerned with implementing distancing and sanitation protocols, as attendees’ immediate well-being takes precedence over that of the environment in the wake of COVID-19. But even if sustainability in some cases is put on […]

COVID-19 is prompting further changes to already complex contracts and the negotiations based on them.

Surviving any crisis requires a combination of resourcefulness, teamwork when possible, and a levelheaded disposition. The last one is not to be underestimated…