Top 5 emerging trends in the Event Industry

The year 2020 redefined the event industry forever. There have been rapid advancements in virtual workflow and environments. It’s hard to predict the future, but the events for 2022 would run in a more sophisticated manner. Remember, most of us have a business and event to run. Thus we were all forced to transport all the in-person activities via mobiles and laptops to people worldwide. A decades transformation of events condensed to a year. Now we have realized the value that can be derived from these events and have also understood the usability.

The in-person events have almost completely transformed into virtual events during this pandemic, and these virtual events are rapidly evolving into hybrid events. According to Bizzabo, 97% of event professionals believe that more hybrid events will take place in 2021 and 2022. The shift to virtual and hybrid events increased safety as social distancing is the key element.  Most online programs have been found cost-effective and international, especially organizations where events are the main revenue drivers. Your customers may be located globally and it’s easy to connect them all with events online.  Amongst the ocean of hybrid and virtual events, it’s easy to get lost. Instead, use the right skills, tools, and technology to be successful. 

Keep reading to know more about 5 rapidly changing event industry trends for 2022 and beyond.

The mandatory lockdown forced all of us to sit back at our homes. When most of us were concerned about the pandemic, all of us were apprehensive about unemployment. Since then, there instantly evolved these online events, and there was a sigh of relief. From a small group of participants, many virtual event platforms today fit in with tens of thousands of participants. Decades of transformation evolved in just a few months. Amazing!!!

The planet is slowly getting better. Virtual events are turning hybrid. The hybrid events blend the in-person component with an online experience. Both face-to-face interactions and online interactions maximize the effectiveness of these hybrid events. Let us also know that there was a sharp increase in the number of virtual events in the previous year, but the year 2022 is anticipated to be a year of hybrid events. 

Today, you have enough materials on the internet to explain how incredibly awesome hybrid events are; and complete guides to help you convert your online events to hybrid. The event tech industry is also accommodating all the tools and technology suitable for hosting hybrid events and is working along for more advancements. Thus, work with planners who have experience conducting a hybrid event and tailor a good hybrid marketing strategy.

For a long time, eco-friendly geeks have pushed for events that are more sustainable and can support and promote the well-being of both the people involved and the environment.

But this did not gain traction until 2019, thanks to the feeble and unhealthy minds. Things took a U-turn in 2019 when COVID-19 struck. There seemed to be a drastic increase in the number of virtual events, hybrid events, micro-events, and many more.

So how does an increase in such virtual events be sustainable? Let us sum up how an event in real life is organized and its associated risks to the environment. In most case scenarios, the event’s venue is choose where attendees have easy access by all means of transport. That leaves a more significant carbon footprint on the environment. 

Next comes the traditional ticketing system, catering, plastic bottles, plastic plates, bright lightings, waste generated in the whole event, resources used for cleaning up the entire venue before and after the event, food leftover, and many more. All these have a terrible impact on the environment and people dependant on it. Switching to these virtual events has no such impacts, yet they have the same productivity and positive outcome as a real-world event. The fun part is that the savings made in hosting a virtual event can then be re-invested as capital.

When you can enjoy the world in a new notion without a full headset and controller system as in Virtual reality(VR), we need to opt for Augmented Reality(AR). It is a mere hardware filter where you get to see anything around with an image, sound, or an effect on top of it. About 88% of event planners made arrangements to host shows with virtual reality last year, and this year, 87% of them were modified into some sort of augmenting reality event.

As just discussed, in the event industry, virtual events have been a choice of event organizers and collaborators in the recent past. Still, it has always been a tedious task to keep all the attendees engaged in a completely virtual event. Trying to keep them engaged requires a lot of hard work and effort. And attending a completely VR event requires hardware equipment without which it’s impossible to experience the fullest of the VR event.

Now AR, the future of digital space, is taking over the entire space, with its flexibility and ease of use by anyone with a smartphone or a tablet. Augmented reality is where elements from the real world are used in conjunction with virtual world events. For instance, developing a multi-story housing project involving many apartments requires experts of many domains to attend the event organized by the project developer. Had the event been hosted virtually using AR, everyone of the attendees would view the model right in the place and time of their choice, leaving no detail untouched. This, in turn, would have increased the productivity of every participant, rather than viewing the plans in a projector in a conference hall where not everyone can have a clear view of the presentation.

Generally, when we hear the term events, we tend to visualize a mass gathering. Of course, virtual and real-life events always have a large number of attendees. Not all prefer a large crowd, and also many organizers want a quality event with just a handful of attendees. They want the attendees to be treated with names and not just numbers, which is precisely the opposite of macro events. Micro events are smaller events, generally a part of a large hybrid model.

Virtual micro events are drawing the attention of most of the people who want to hold online events. It makes the connections between the organization and attendees powerful and meaningful, which in turn boosts the intention of the event being conducted. 

Forget an organization. A large number of other happenings are taking the virtual micro event shape, for instance, live music stages, weddings and receptions, festivals, therapy sessions, fitness drills, cooking etc.

There are numerous benefits of opting for virtual micro events over virtual events. 

Micro events are 

‘Without big data analytics, companies are blind and deaf, wandering out onto the web like deer on a freeway.’- Geoffrey Moore, an author, and consultant.

The event industry has evolved with more expectations from the customers. The rapidly changing customer expectations can be met with ‘big data analytics.’ Event planners need to collect data as that is the key to staying ahead of the customer’s wants, needs, and intentions. The absence of data will steal your audiences from you. Without sufficient information, no betterments can happen. 

Thanks to the new virtual event technology that has made more accessible tools to collect data and insights from the event.

You can track the number of clicks, the duration of participants in the session, the number of attendees per session, who they interact with, the number of chats, the views each sponsorship page had, demographics, and much more valuable insights. Thus, you get to track almost all KPIs to measure the event success.

Also, calculating ROI is very risky in virtual events. But solid and sufficient data helps to prove event ROI. With all this data, design a better event the next time. You can transform to hybrid events as well. 

Thanks to all data tracking!!!

All these tools are obsolete without captions in your event. Exclusive events with greater levels of inclusivity needs captions. They reach people worldwide regardless of geographical borders. Live captioners play a major role in enhancing the accessibility of online events. Certified linguistics perform live captioning for your sessions. The deaf and hard of hearing attendees benefit the most out of it. For all the non-native speakers, you have the captions running parallel for better comprehension and retention.

Captions can be subtitles of other languages. For instance, if the speaker is addressing the audience in Spanish, the attendees who are not aware of the language can follow the subtitles that are in English or any other language of your preference. 

At CaptioningStar, we offer impeccable captions and subtitles at competitive rates.Include captions to all your events and we promise the number of attendees will gradually increase. Highlight your events with the availability of captions.

Win more participants!!!