This post is part of the HopSkip Planner Spotlight Series where HopSkip spotlight's planners across the industry to bring awareness of how they adapted to COVID-19, communicating and lessons learned and sharing how they are viewing the meetings and events industry in a post-pandemic world.
Name: Marcus. R. Urquhart, MBA, CMP, DES
Company Name: National League of Cities
Job Title: Business Events Manager
Years of Experience: 10
How do you think you are positioned, after months of persevering with the pandemic, to take advantage of our new and disrupted meetings/events landscape?
After months of persevering the pandemic has given me the ability to flex my creative muscles and transition from a tactical assassin to a strategic powerhouse. The new and disrupted landscape has questioned the meetings/events industry and what/who we are. Certainly, we handle logistics; however, we also do so much more to drive strategy, but we improve performance systematically. With my newfound mindset, I have been sharing this with anyone I collaborate with to drive innovation and make every experience and interaction for attendees memorable.
As our community moves forward with planning in person meetings, what new technologies or processes are you implementing that you may have not looked at before?
Prior to the pandemic, my role was mainly about how to leverage KPIs with in-person events. Now, my role has been finding ways to adapt those in-person events into hybrid or online-engagement initiatives and measuring the effectiveness of those, and safely returning to in-person. I would have never looked at experience platforms like SnapBar, Capsule Video, or REMO. Also, I would have never looked at health technologies like, CLEAR. However, I am glad to continue to push myself and attendees to stay on the cutting edge and engage with our organization as the industry continues to innovate.
As we see virtual meetings transition back to face to face, hybrid meetings are beginning to be the vehicle to return to normalcy. What are your thoughts on hybrid meetings versus traditional fully in person meetings?
The industry will, I believe, forever be a hybrid. Almost all events will have some type of hybrid element, whether during or after. The amount of access broader audiences benefited from will not go away as this helped organization's bottom lines. While I do believe the demand will spike for traditional fully in-person events, there will forever be a fear of the 2020 pandemic. So even if, in-person has some sessions available OnDemand after, hybrid is here to stay.
In your opinion, what do you think the biggest value for your attendees is in regards to returning to live events?
The biggest value will be an in-person connection. While networking is certainly important, just being back around their peers in person in any capacity will be the biggest value. Meal functions, social activities, and side conversations are what our attendees are craving to foster and build relationships with their peers who are new to public office.
As the pandemic fades away and we return to face-to-face events what do you hope changes, either for planners or hoteliers, in the traditional RFP and proposal process as a result of all of the learnings from the last 20+ months?
I hope hoteliers will not now be ridged in their contract language and unfairly penalize planners for the loss in revenue. I do believe the spirit of collaboration and fairness should stay as we are not out of the woods yet and soon hoteliers will be flooded with all the demand that was present prior. However, I do foresee the traditional will not return for sometime as hybrid will consume some of the in-person engagement and shift to virtual. I am excited to see the balancing act we will all have to do with AV, catering and function space as the industry ebbs and flows up and down.
This post is part of the HopSkip Planner Spotlight Series where HopSkip spotlight's planners across the industry to bring awareness of how they adapted to COVID-19, communicating and lessons learned and sharing how they are viewing the meetings and events industry in a post-pandemic world.
