Kai Hattendorf is Managing Director and CEO of UFI, the Global Association of the Exhibition Industry. He is responsible for UFI activities and events globally, as well as the operation of its Paris headquarters and the offices and presences in Bogota, Brussels, Dubai, Hong Kong and Shanghai.
These are “in-between” times. After the catastrophic 2020, our industry saw more reason to be hopeful in 2021. This year, markets began to reopen around the world, but not with the full reopening we had hoped for as we continue to be challenged by new waves and new variants of COVID. We are still facing an outlook of “stop and go” for show organizers, the most difficult situation possible for our industry. But as we head towards the end of the year, we have passed a remarkable tipping point: Less than a year after the first vaccination campaigns began, more than half the world’s population has received at least one dose, with more than 26 million doses of the vaccine being given daily.
So, it is time to look beyond the pandemic challenge, and towards the trends that will shape our industry in 2022 and beyond. As every year, the UFI team has been speaking to many of our members and industry leaders from all around the world. In five concise themes, here is what we believe will shape the next 12 to 18 months.
In this “in-between” time, travel remains depressed, with fewer people able to attend exhibitions. At the same time, the urge to return to the show floor is tangible. The experience on-site is different, with unfamiliar setups shaped by health regulations, for example. Last year, we wrote that returning shows would focus mainly on the “trade” in trade show—and that is what we see, with sellers reporting good business with the buyers they meet and referring to “high-quality visitors.” As the pandemic complexities diminish going forward, we will see how fast and to what degree we will welcome pre-pandemic customers back and to what degree we will see fewer, more senior attendees becoming the norm.
Working jointly as an industry, we have formulated an industry-wide pledge to deliver net-zero carbon events by 2050 at the latest. We are working with the United Nations on this action, and we presented this pledge and the work ahead at COP26 in Glasgow. Within weeks, hundreds of businesses from across our sector have signed up. This demonstrates how high up on everyone’s agenda sustainability has risen. Customers, governments, investors and employees are all increasingly demanding that we rapidly decrease the carbon footprint of our industry. We don’t start this “race to zero” from zero, and we have a strong case to make as an industry that every exhibition that we organize helps to reduce carbon emissions—as we aggregate an industry and its players at one location at the same time, saving a multitude of individual business trips instead.
The discussion about data stewardship, data ownership and data monetization will only grow in relevance as our industry’s business model evolves towards a more holistic one, connecting supply and demand. Yes, “face-to-face” will remain at the core of the events industry, but tomorrow’s champions of our industry will be those companies that find the best activation between on-site industry events and online communities, content and services. Platform solutions are here to stay. Expect to see consolidation taking place as well as more clearly defined business models in that space.
Most companies have been forced to let some employees go during the pandemic. In addition, some colleagues have left our industry to take on positions in seemingly more stable industries and sectors. Job security, salaries and seemingly less stressful positions are the top reasons HR departments hear when dealing with these departures.
Yet our sector has always been able to attract bright, motivated and uniquely talented people, and this will not change. But we will be well-advised to rethink how we position our businesses and to write a new narrative focused on why a career in business events stands out. For a generation that is driven by the search for purpose, looking for meaning in their work, wanting to be involved, we can offer them what no other sector can: being there where the future is taking shape and being a member of the community that makes it happen.
In “tipping point” theories, we focus on one event or development that will change something forever. And, for the foreseeable future, we will spend a lot of time discussing potential tipping points, from customer behavior to climate change, from staff retention to the COVID pandemic.
However, so far, we have not seen the “Uber” disruption moment in our industry, where a digital newcomer rewrites our business model. Instead, rather the opposite, our industry has embraced digital solutions alongside more traditional services, enriching our offerings and value.
We have not seen a pandemic tipping point either, with buyers and sellers embracing online events over the on-site trade show experience—again rather the opposite, with buyers and sellers marking digital trade shows with an extremely low net promoter score of -51. We have once again seen the solidity of the face-to-face business model. But we are called upon to find the right answers, perhaps the right mix, to many challenges, from exhibitor and visitor retention to climate change.
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