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: Stefania Mura
Company Name: CS Events
Job Title: Events & Marketing Director
Years of Experience: 35+
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?
Unfortunately this pandemic has created chaos in our industry, several colleagues and friends had been forced to close, others have joint ventures. This has left us (independent company) with the possibility to gain new small market sectors where competitors have disappeared and have given the possibility of learning new technologies and forms of events which have adapted to the new world
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?
We have definitely made videoconferencing our new form of contact with suppliers and clients - never before would we have thought to do a video call with a new client to discuss a brief. You would have limited to a telephone call, but videoconferencing has made distances less "distant" and a way to start creating an approach with the client even before an in-person contact. And since travelling has not been resumed completely by lots of our clients, we are implementing virtual site visits as this will give a chance to move forward with the planning and booking despite the difficulties
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?
Hybrid meetings are a good solution to extend the audience (in every meeting there are participants who are unable to take part to the sessions because of workload or budget constraints, flight issues etc) but no matter how brilliant and extravagant you can do hybrid meetings, nothing will replace the networking and live exchanges that you have with in person meetings.
In your opinion, what do you think the biggest value for your attendees is in regards to returning to live events?
As I said before, the networking, the exchange of views, opinions and experiences which happen during the breaks and social events. The personal touch and feeling cannot be transmitted via online or hybrid connections.
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 do hope that hotels will keep the flexibility, support and availability that they have demonstrated over the past 20 months, that they will not increase their rates when business will start to pick up. Also I hope that clients will not consider us planners all so desperate for work that they will squeeze us to have responses in no given time, challenge all our fees and send out RFP to 20 agencies
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.
