Insight
Event curation: much more than a guest list exercise
GREGORY REEVES MANAGING DIRECTOR OF CONNECTIONS LUXURY SAYS THE REAL WORK OF AN EVENT BEGINS WITH CURATION
T he events industry is
good at counting activity. Registrations, appointments, contacts and footfall all provide clear measures for a post-event report. What they do not necessarily reveal is whether the right people met, whether those conversations developed or whether participants left with a meaningful reason to continue the relationship.
For high-value B2B events, that distinction matters. A full appointment diary may demonstrate efficiency, but it cannot guarantee relevance.
This is why I believe curation should be treated as a fundamental part of event design, rather than simply a guest-list exercise. When the room is deliberately selected and the programme allows time together beyond formal appointments, relationships can become clearer and more commercially useful.
Good curation begins long before delegates arrive. Organisers need to understand participants’ commercial priorities, current interests and reasons for meeting. Technology can support that process, but judgement remains essential. The strongest matches come from understanding the people and businesses involved, not simply identifying similarities on paper.
The formal meeting provides a starting point, but a timed appointment can only take a conversation so far. Trust often develops when people meet again in a different setting, perhaps during a shared meal, while discovering a destination or through an experience that gives them something genuine to discuss.
This principle sits at the heart of the Connections Way. Curated one-toone meetings provide structure, while destination-led experiences and time spent together create the conditions in which introductions can develop naturally. Experiences should not be treated as entertainment around the edges of an event. When thoughtfully
Above: Gregory Reeves
designed, they reveal something about the destination and something about the people taking part.
At Connections Luxury Europe 2026 in Barcelona, 200 delegates participated in 2,506 pre-arranged meetings. The appointments established common ground, while the wider programme allowed conversations to continue across different settings.
Explore Seoul applied the same principle on a different scale. Sixty-two delegates combined 620 meetings with 14 experiences across the destination. Participants encountered potential partners repeatedly while experiencing Seoul together, creating shared context that could be carried into subsequent conversations.
The same thinking will shape Connections Luxury UK & Ireland in London this September. Two hundred buyers and suppliers will each participate in 20 one-to-one meetings, creating 2,000 appointments overall, alongside a Power Hour, three seated meals and a programme across distinctive London venues, including Lincoln’ s Inn Great Hall and Sea Containers. Moving between appointments, shared tables and experiences gives relevant conversations more than one opportunity to progress. Left to their own devices, most people will speak to people they already know, and cliques will naturally form. The structure we adopt at Connections facilitates the brokering of new relationships and conversations in an extremely organic manor, removing the anxiety felt when pushing yourself on new relationships.
For organisers, the lesson is not simply to reduce or increase numbers. It is to design every element around relevance and continuity.
Curation does not remove spontaneity. Done well, it creates better conditions for it. The strongest event outcome is rarely the longest contact list. It is the group of relationships that participants genuinely want, and have a commercially credible reason, to continue. n
58 / CONFERENCE & MEETINGS WORLD / ISSUE 144