Cvent CONNECT Europe
“
We want to have the world’s
broadest and deepest platform to run
an entire event programme. Then we
want to have the world’s broadest
and deepest solution set to win
and manage MICE business – the
hospitality cloud side.”
CMW asked CEO Reggie Aggarwal
about Cvent’s global plans. “The mission
is the same: to build the simplest, most
integrated platform for marketing and
management is still our call to action on
a global basis.”
“Human connection is driving
business, we’re about the science of
bringing people together,” he added.
Aggarwal said that in four years the
company had tripled its revenue. “It is
primarily driven by our customers, not
new business.”
Cvent’s business used to be concerned
mainly with the pre-registration phase,
but now it includes the day of business.
“There are microcosms of spaces
within events that are very complex,”
said Aggarwal, and these need
understanding and managing.
Cvent software, he noted, can now
make clear the ROI of sales meetings. It
can also deliver analytics of the rates of
closing deals at meetings.
“We’re trying to educate the industry
to understand the science, scope, impact
and cost of an event,” Aggarwal pointed
out, noting that almost every planner he
has talked to doesn’t fully include all the
meeting and event costs, particularly
human capital. “Whatever the meeting
costs you, double it…that’s what human
labour means,” he said.
“We need to, therefore, think about
what reward is required from an event,
usually it’s 3x at least. When you
articulate it that way, it changes
behaviour,” he stressed. And here he’s
talking about true full costs and
opportunity, not just ‘out of pocket’ costs.
Aggarwal is also an events evangelist,
noting that Cvent CONNECT is where
customers ‘find religion’. And he has
invested heavily in building the European
event into what is now a much bigger
undertaking than in 2017.
The Cvent CONNECT Europe
conference sessions in 2019 covered areas
such as event marketing, event design,
maximising mobile event apps, the state
of MICE business, sustainability, social
psychology for event organisers and the
ongoing impact of GDPR.
A pre-conference Cvent Academy
Education Day, hosted on 14 October,
offered a full day dedicated to Cvent users
to expand their product knowledge
through interactive workshops and
classroom-style training with experts.
“The sophistication of products has
expanded exponentially and our industry
has moved up significantly, partly because
it was an immature space,” Aggarwal told
CMW, adding that event spend is the last
bastion of unbridled spend. No one really
knows how much they spend on events
and those that think they do, don’t include
the human cost,” he said.
“But, now we’re moving into a more
educational phase to get people to the
C-Suite to see how much they are really
spending,” he adds.
An Innovation Pavilion at this year’s
conference drew 40 exhibitors and
suppliers from across the industry
including hotel chains, DMCs, incentives,
AV, and travel/transportation providers.
Other key sessions from the London
conference included:
• The Future of Event Technology
• Women in Leadership Panel
• Sustainability in Events: The Growing
Need to Go Green Panel
• Measuring Event ROI and the Pillars of
Event Intelligence
• What Travel Managers Want from
Hotels
Will Lawton, Global Campaign Team
Lead, Receipt Bank, said that he’d come
to Cvent CONNECT Europe because of
the thought leadership content. “It is a
genuinely helpful conference and allows
you to improve your [industry]
knowledge.”
While Cyrielle Doll, Events and
Projects Associate, EPRA, said: “The
main reason to attend Cvent CONNECT
Europe is for training and learning more
about Cvent. Mission accomplished. The
training day was superb.”
Cvent employs 4,300 people, has
27,000 customers and 300,000 users
worldwide.
Left: Cvent CEO
and Founder,
Reggie Aggarwal
on stage of Cvent
CONNECT Europe
Below: Cvent
CONNECT Europe
visitors networking
ISSUE 103
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CONFERENCE & MEETINGS WORLD
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