working with PROMTUR , the new Panama NTO , and also doing the destination development planning on NEOM , the new planned mega-city in Saudi Arabia .

On the venues side we ’ re advising on NEOM ’ s proposed convention and exhibition centre and doing operational and sales and marketing consulting to the new China National Convention Centre ( CNCC-II ) in Beijing . We ’ re also consulting Destination Canada on the largest event legacy related project in the industry ’ s history , a three-year effort we ’ re conducting in partnership with Meet4Impact .

Now that the meetings industry is returning , where do you see the best potential and where are the bumps in the road ? Hopefully , we ’ re leaving the pandemic in our rear view mirror , but it has left lasting effects , some that will be good . I think the biggest challenge in our industry now is that the carpet has been pulled out from under a lot of associations . Many are struggling for members and sponsors , so finances are an issue .

I ’ ve always thought that the supply side of our industry needs to move beyond thinking we ’ re only in the destination promotion and event servicing business . We need to see ourselves as being in the association business . That means going the extra mile for association clients and finding a role in supporting the association ecosystem .

I ’ m also focused on the issue of event legacy and we ’ re helping to advance the practice and the science . The most important strategic direction for our industry is to make legacy the core of what we do . Importantly , event legacies also directly support the aims of the UN SDGs .

How has the meetings industry changed and what is the role now of event tech ?

The fact that big-tech has already planted stakes in the event space should be seen as a validation of how important our industry is , and not just commercially and economically but also socially . I see big-tech as platforms and the traditional industry players as the creative force . Think of it a bit like big companies creating app stores and smaller companies creating all the apps . We will always need our leading specialist tech firms driving innovation and helping our industry to leverage these platforms in ways that deliver better meeting experiences .

How are venues coping and coming back ? There are two aspects to this question . One is existing venues and how they are doing businesswise . The other is what ’ s happening with new developments . I ’ ll start with the developmental side .

Yes , some projects in conceptual mode went into hibernation . In general , we weren ’ t seeing new privately financed developments . Some projects in construction mode kept going because they were too far along to write off . On the other hand , public sector initiated venues are developed under more long-term objectives and so have mostly kept ticking along . But , overall it bodes well for future venue investment . People want to meet in person and companies want to invest sponsorship where people are meeting in person .

As for operations of existing venues , the best way to look at it is to correlate it to hotel and airline business . During the first third of the pandemic the trend lines went straight south , and for meetings it was all postponements and cancellations . Then there has been a gradual recovery . Most of the big centres are still facing challenging times as the return of the larger groups is lagging . However , meetings are a future business and most of us think Covid-19 is in the past now .

“ Hopefully we ’ re leaving the pandemic in our rearview mirror , but it has left lasting effects ”

Postponed meetings are beginning to be rescheduled and associations are beginning to gear back up . We anticipate conventions being managed on a shorter planning horizon until things have fully recovered , so things could get crowded in some markets .

Where do you see the most promising future opportunities now in the meetings industry ? One of the biggest negative trends before Covid was the commoditisation of our industry . The pandemic has changed that . The supply and demand sides of the equation are in a position now where they are going to need to work together to make things work again . To me the biggest opportunity is to forge better partnerships .

The other key opportunity is to work together to position the association and meetings industries as vital to economic and social development . We need political and community support to be successful , and we ’ ve got the attention of these stakeholders now . We can leverage that in the rebuilding process .

You released your second annual report on Leveraging Intellectual Capital of convention destinations ; talk us through some of the key findings . The key findings come down to two things every year . First , how are destinations ranking in terms of their levels of intellectual capital ? We define that as how much influence they have on global association boards and we measure that by how many leaders on those boards are people from their communities .

The second is where we do a ratio on how each destination ’ s numbers of hosted conventions relates to their amount of intellectual capital . It ’ s essentially a benchmarking exercise . Destinations can use it as a tool for evaluating their business success . We highlight ‘ cities to watch ’ which yields insights in a competitive sense .