The post-pandemic values of meetings: : innovation and resilience in the meetings industry

Abstract

“The Covid 19 pandemic took the meetings industry from top to bottom in one move”. These were the introducing words from the CEO of a large Swedish network of meetings firms, in their annual report for 2020. In the beginning of that year, one of the most challenging crises in the history of the meetings organizations emerged. Now, two years on the pandemic has changed the conditions for the entire industry and restrictions on social interactions have become a “new normal”. Particularly vulnerable to both constraints on interactions between people and to fear of disease is the meetings industry. The meetings industry belongs to the MICE sector, acronym for meetings, incentives, congress and exhibition, which is regarded as “the most lucrative group of travelers for a destination“ (Mykletun 2014: 189). Zhang (2014) finds that the meetings industry in Denmark makes a significant contribution to the economy (Zhang 2014), an economic feature which makes the meetings industry critical for economic development strategies of regions and municipalities. Although the sector is considered to be particularly profitable and resilient to change, the pandemic crisis struck hard with many cancelled and postponed meetings in conference venues, hotels, and arenas across the world. Structural change related to digitalization had already started to transform the hospitality sector (cf Evans and Schmalensee 2016) with for instance peer-to-peer services like Airbnb and Uber (Wirtz and Lovelock 2022: 14). The pandemic reinforced the digitalization processes where meetings now could be held online and people employed in non-physical professions could attend meetings from their homes. Two years on, meetings organizations are trying to learn from these events. A Swedish regional tourism marketing organization recently stated in a report that just one out of five employees wish to work in the ordinary physical office every day of the week in the future (Tourism in Skåne 2022). On one side, the report show that meeting participants longed for social events and everyday physical meetings during the pandemic. On the other hand, digital meetings are not as costly. Also, digital meetings put less pressure on the environment and employees can spend more time with their families working from home (ibid.). New questions arise about how the meetings industry will remain relevant in a new situation characterized by global challenges such as the pandemic and reinforced digitalization. In tourism research, scholars call for further inquiry on structural change (Sigala 2020: 316) and the meetings industry is a tourism context that is currently undergoing such changes. The aim of this study is to understand the meetings industry with a focus on the meetings industry supply on the global market, in the post pandemic time. The following research questions will be answered: What service products characterize the meetings industry supply two years after the pandemic outbreak? What values are proposed to target groups? Literature review When it comes to previous research about MICE and change the field rapidly expanded across by the end of the 1990:s. Researchers would at the time typically discuss how a destination could benefit from developing a meetings industry and assessed its economic impacts (Dwyer and Forsyth 1997). Studies looking into the specific character of the MICE sector, found that meetings were commonly arranged for commercial, educational or government purposes. In a review of meetings industry scientific articles from 1990 to 2003 the following core themes were identified: the economic impact of conventions, meeting participation processes, destination marketing, and technology advancements (Myong and Back 2005). It was found 2 that planners previously feared that modern technology such as video conferencing and virtual exhibitions would put an end to people gathering in one location. A main driving force for using IT today is efficiency. Another major theme in this field is spatial perspectives and site selection (Suwannasat, Katawandee et al. 2022). Schabbing (2022) finds that the pandemic brought real financial challenges to the meetings industry in Germany. With high debts within governments and cities, the meetings industry will take much longer to repair financially than other sectors, he argues. Germany is one of the top nations for international meetings and its infrastructure as well as business plans will most probably change radically (Schabbing 2022). According to Ludovica and Cabiddu (2021), meetings organizations have to adapt quickly in accordance with their environment in order to be resilient. The industry has to communicate responsively in a quick and efficient way and the researchers therefore suggest that the industry marketing practices could be more flexible (ibid: 1). They propose a framework that improves the marketing through an “agile marketing capability” (AMC). This means that the firm identify change in customer demand, which in turn makes it possible to formulate adequate response continuously. Another important aspect of meetings and change is the future attendants´ perspective. According to one study the meetings participants of the future prove to value rapid, modest and strictly organized meetings and events. The Millennials want to be engaged and seek out so called “edutainment”, thus entertainment with an aspect of learning new things. Also, personal benefit from attending is regarded important, as well as opportunity to professional development. Meetings in-person seem to be the preferred communication format by this group (Fenich, Scott-Halsell et al. 2014). Iglesias, Smith and Gibson (2021) find that a main obstacle in organizing new virtual events is how to engage the participants. Engagement seems to be one of the reasons to why live broadcasting and on-demand videos of high-quality are becoming more popular (Iglesias, Smith et al. 2021). Another theme deals with how the industry is relating to environmental problems. Mykletun, Bartkeviciute, & Puchkova (2014) state that greening of the meetings industry is an under-researched field. They compare how meetings venue managers, meeting organizers and meeting participants perceptions of “green meetings” vary. By focusing on the importance of green meetings and stakeholders intentions they find that green meetings mainly are perceived as something positive (Mykletun, Bartkeviciute et al. 2014). Mair and Jago (2010), who studied the drivers of “greening” the business events sector. “A green meeting” in this context usually means the measures that different stakeholders have taken in order to reduce their ecological footprint (ibid: 78). Their findings show that personal values, but also managerial values were drivers for offering “green” meetings. In addition, the presence of a CSR policy, as well as positioning against competitors and managing the brand in a desirable way were other “greening drivers”. Some of the stated major obstacles for making the meetings industry “greener” is a lack of time and resources, as well as lack of regulations (Mair and Jago 2010). The online conference is usually claimed to be more sustainable from the ecological perspective. In addition, some claim that the online conference constitutes an unique opportunity to be creative in particularly difficult situations (Goodsett, Eddy et al. 2022). One form of sustainable business events suggested is that high-end visitors could spend more money on a prolonged time of visit, while a long stay is often claimed in the sustainability debate to generate less carbon dioxide It would decrease the ecological foot print and in addition it elongates the tourism season, as a benefit for the destination community. This study finds that sustainability practices are only to a very low degree actually being implemented in the MICE sector. The researchers suggest therefore a transition towards sustainability through a post-covid recovery strategy, with emphasis on awareness-raising activities for the MICE sector (Orthodoxou, Loizidou et al. 2021). Orthodoxouh et al (2021) claim however that customer awareness and demand related to sustainability is low. This could mean that there are no economic incentives from the meetings industry perspective for investing in sustainability. This review indicates a limited understanding of how the meetings industry is tackling the elements of change that characterize the post pandemic time. More knowledge is needed about what values in relation to environmental, social and economic change are being proposed to customers in a situation in which a resilient meetings industry seem to be in need of a “re-start”.
Methods
This study departs from a social science interdisciplinary outlook on the meetings industry with theories from a critical service marketing perspective. In order to explore trends in the supply and to understand the meetings industry value offerings in the post covid time, I focus on the marketing of meetings products across the international arena. Trends in the supply of meeting products is identified in a) the offerings that such actors communicate in their marketing towards potential customers and b) in industry media. The object of study is therefore the meetings industry external strategic communication in the post pandemic period. The empirical material was collected a few months after authorities of the nordic countries had classified the pandemic to be over. Beside two semi-structured qualitative interviews with meetings professionals, the selection of cases are firms who offer meetings on a commercial basis, and belong to the corporate meetings segment. A criteria is that they belong to a chapter in the global Meetings Professional International association, MPI3. The criterion for the selection of industry media cases is that the article content is about the meetings industry in the post pandemic period. The four MPI chapters are located in Africa, North America, Asia and Europe. Two random firms were chosen within each of these chapters. This generated a marketing material from the homepages total of 10 medium sized firms who offer meetings services. In addition, texts and visual material was collected from international meetings industry media articles published between 2020-2022. The empirical material was analyzed in two steps in accordance with culture analysis (Ehn and Löfgren 2001) identifying emerging first order themes in the data. The empirical themes were then related to the theoretical framework in a second step, by conceptualizing them into second order, theoretical categories (Aspers 2007, Gioia, Corley et al. 2013). The overarching analytical question “directed” to systematically analyze the material depart from the theoretical standpoint that values are co-created in a socio-cultural context. Values are understood as valuation propositions (Corvellec and Hultman 2014) in the strategic communication of the meetings industry and as part of a discursive change in the current state of the industry.
The post pandemic values of meetings
In a first step analysis, a few categories of value propositions were identified: the value of professional expertise, healthy meetings, green meetings, seamless high-tech meetings and last, flexible meetings. First, one recurring value is the offer of professional expertise on how to arrange meetings in the “right way”. Some firms offer the services of an online course on how to hold a meeting or they offer the expertise from a special meeting consultant that can be hired for learning about- and/or for creating professional meetings (www.scandichotels.com). Others offer courses on how to create a “good meeting culture”, and also how to buy meetings and conference services in a procurement process (Svenska Möten 2022). Second, in the “health-keeping type of meetings”, the physical distance between 1 While other markets were still under some restrictions (www.who.com). 2 According to ICCA (2020). ICCA Statistics Report Country and City Rankings – Public Abstract. ICCA is a nonprofit trade association that represents destinations and suppliers specialized in international meetings. 3 Meeting Professionals International (MPI) is a non-profit organization which is one of the largest meetings industry associations in the world. Founded in 1970, it has a global community of 60 000 meetings- and event professionals, including 15 000 member organizations in over 70 countries in Asia, South America, US, Canada and Europe (www.mpi.org). 4 participants are carefully managed on site, arranging the meeting room and the chairs in certain kinds of ways, invoking two meters distance between people, dividing the meals into timeslots, placing hand sanitizers in every room and so on. The health theme is still prevalent also in the online types of services as a health-safe option, like the digital meetings and streaming services. One prominent meetings actor is an organization owned by over 130 meeting facilities in Sweden who offer also online courses in how to book covid-safe meetings (Svenska Möten 2022). Quite a few meetings actors emphasize the value of nature, such as the sea and forests, near the meetings facility on offer. Some offer the possibility of holding walk and talks meetings outside. Third, a number of actors provides “Sustainable meetings” which communicates the value of “well considered transportation, the right facilities and climate smart food” (ibid.) which typically communicate, as above, that it is ecologically unsustainable to move across large distances, at least with fossil fueled transportation. “The green meeting” typically offer not a direct value as such, but rather offer a reduced impact on the environment in comparison to an “ordinary meeting”. But another type of “green meetings” is that the service product in itself “brings competence to the green industries” (www.gronamoten.agrovast.se). These “green meetings” gives buyers and their firm a “license” to state (to staff and other stakeholders) that they are environmentally friendly. The “green meeting” could also be interpreted as a way of legitimizing digital meetings. Fourth, one example of the category of seamless high-tech meetings is firm who offer digital cloud services for holding large scale digital meetings that are integrated with other digital services such as their social media. On the homepage they present an image of young woman sitting at a desk, describing the firm as: “…the world’s only communications cloud for events /…/Everything you need to drive meaningful insights and outcomes”. The image of a smiling woman in glasses with her sleeves up and a coffee-to-go on the desk indicates a work environment. No technology s visible in the image. The visitor/viewer is offered a trial of the service which promises connections to global target groups, interactive platforms and integrative data analysis of users’ online activities on social media. The values proposed in the marketing can be summoned as a seamless integrative access to high-tech services (www.notified.com). Last, as an example of the fifth category there is a meetings supplier homepage offering “hybrid meetings” which means that a meeting can take place “here, there or anywhere” (www.scandichotels.com). The choice of different types of meetings and events are being emphasized in the texts and images. The CEO of a hotel- and conference venue predicts in a tourism industry magazine interview about the future of the meetings industry that it is going to be: “…all about diversifying the supply” (www.besoksliv.se). The freedom of choice and flexibility for participants is being proposed as value for buyers of hybrid meetings. Here, the diversity of meetings services is constructed as a valuable offering.
Conclusions
All in all, the flexibility offered by meetings organizers is striking. It is conclusive to say that the values communicated in the marketing is everything from sensory experiences in sites to space independence. Safety regarding health is clearly another value. Also, the value of nature is communicated. On one hand there is the opportunity to experience the sea or the forest, on the other hand there is the offering of choosing the environmental service, that considers the industry ecological impact in various steps of the service delivery. There are even meetings firms who specialize in arranging meetings only for buyers who are themselves specialized in issues considering the environment. The preliminary result indicates a discussion about connections between resilience, innovation and the role the industry has in sustainable tourism development.

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Abstract (Swedish)

• author: Andersson, Malin
• organization: Department of Strategic Communication
• alternative title: Mötens postpandemiska värden : innovation och resiliens i mötesindustrin
• publishing date: 2022-09-27
• type: Contribution to conference
• publication status: published
• subject: Economic Geography; Communication Studies
• pages: 5 pages
• conference name: The 30th Nordic Symposium of Tourism and Hospitality research
• conference location: Borgå, Finland
• conference dates: 2022-09-26 - 2022-09-29
• project: The meeting industry of the future: business models, interactions and hospitality in the age of digitalisation
• language: English
• LU publication?: yes
• id: 851df6e6-76bc-4e13-9a51-84e0daa0c21b
• date added to LUP: 2022-10-04 09:34:24
• date last changed: 2024-10-07 15:44:56