BTN is following a single group of meeting practitioners throughout 2021 to assess corporate meetings' progress as companies return to face-to-face events. Participants in the second of the three-part series include Zurich-based Nadja Haag, global meetings and events manager for Takeda Pharmaceuticals; ZS Associates meetings and travel manager Suzanne Boyan; Anthem director of travel and events Cindy Heston; and industry consultant Betsy Bondurant. They spoke with BTN senior editor Donna M. Airoldi in late July about how the issues facing meeting and event departments had shifted since their April conversation. Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
BTN: Have you held any in-person or hybrid meetings since we spoke in late April?
Nadja Haag: The team did have the first meetings where we [had] a studio built and a very small amount of people coming together, especially the speakers. And in that environment, it was very happily secure in terms of testing every day and making sure that distance was kept and quite securely set up. [There were] only about 10 people, and a colleague of mine ran it.
Cindy Heston: Everything has been virtual for the most part. There was a meeting we held that was live, but it was more in conjunction with an outdoor event. Also, we were very cognizant of ensuring that during the actual meeting time, which was the next day after the outdoor event, participants who did not want to be in-person had access to the virtual component of that session.
Betsy Bondurant: A few clients have [held meetings], and the ones that have are global companies who are seeing more of an uptick in Asia-Pacific, and they are starting to plan some in Q3 and Q4 of this year. But with the delta variant of Covid-19 coming on board, I think people are starting to rethink that a little bit. We talked about this on the last call, as it relates to reputational risk, concerns and certainly above that is the safety of the attendees.
Suzanne Boyan: We have not had hybrid or in-person meetings, but we have gone on site visits for our hybrid and in-person meetings that are taking place next month.
BTN: What have you learned from the events you've held or are planning so far?
Heston: [We determined] the standard registration questions for agreeing to follow governmental or local requirements. We also carved out an individual who would be responsible for enforcing all the conditions we built on the registration site. From our perspective, it was a really good experience to say that these are the new basic requirements for a live event. If we don't have event staff there, there must be someone there on the stakeholder side that will take the role of making sure all participants are following those guidelines. It gives us a good template for going forward.
Bondurant: Many of my clients have that Covid compliance officer role now, so that makes perfect sense. I'm attending an in-person meeting next week, and two things I thought were really interesting as part of that process: You have to be vaccinated in order to attend in-person, and they are having everyone upload their information onto [identification platform] Clear. And in order to ensure capacity limits and social distancing, they did online registration for individual sessions so they had a capacity limit of maybe 40 per room, and they're enforcing those limits.
BTN: Suzanne, how have those site visits been?
Boyan: They've been … OK. The site visits have not been up to the same caliber I would have anticipated pre-Covid. There are certain things I'm willing to overlook. Yes, the hotels are not fully staffed, so they are a little bit dirtier. There are longer lines, things like that. But from even just a sales staff point of view, I've really struggled to understand why they would be making some of the choices they are making for our program that will ultimately give them $1 million to $2 million. I guess I understand that the market is compressed, and they might not feel like they need to work very hard for the money. But in the same respect, I have some major concerns about how they are going to treat my employees when they are there. So that is what I've been struggling with a lot.
BTN: Did your experience surprise you?
Boyan: Part of me was surprised because we were visiting resorts, which have bounced back a little quicker than business-market hotels, and they were very busy when we went. All were at 90 percent occupancy. So part of me was like, wow, surely you would make sure that you have all hands on deck to make sure the facilities were clean. But then I'm also very aware, because I'm feeling this on my team, there is a shortage of workers, and it's hard to get people to come back to work, especially if you jolted them in the past by laying them off or furloughing them. But it's just such a tough position to be in, and it does make you wonder, well, they're not picking up this fork in the middle of the hallway, are they cleaning my room? I am a little concerned about how my people will react to that.
BTN: The delta variant is spreading. Some destinations are returning to indoor mask requirements. Are those affecting meetings you are currently planning?
Boyan: Yes and no. Yes, in the sense we are keeping a close eye on it, but no, we are still planning, and people are still very excited to get together for our first in-person meeting. And we have a very high vaccination rate of our people, so we are moving forward as planned—in person with a very small virtual audience.
Haag: For us, it hasn't yet, but we are watching it very closely. We just had a meeting with security, and we are trying to stay on top of what is happening in different countries, especially for international meetings.
Heston: Not necessarily, because a lot of our events that we are planning have a virtual [component] now as part of the meetings for the remainder of this year. We are ready to flip that switch and make it 100 percent virtual given what is going on right now. … Duty of care and risk mitigation is No. 1.
Bondurant: Are non-essential travel restrictions off, or are there still a lot of controls around that?
Heston: Our non-essential controls are still in place. … At first when opening our booking tool back up, in the first week in June, everything was pretty green as far as trends and protocols and what we define as low risk, high risk and moderate risk, but we are seeing a lot of that turning to red. It's a very dynamic situation. All of our business travel is still business-critical.
BTN: What else is new in the past three months?
Bondurant: A couple of clients are almost considering skipping hybrid and not going down that path, because they don't feel they can satisfy both audiences in a synchronous manner. I'm hearing this a lot more. Trying to integrate that external audience in the in-person event is challenging and complex. From what I'm hearing, it's not really satisfactory to either audience. There is a lot more focus on why we don't just keep these two separate. We still want to be inclusive and have all the benefits of doing virtual meetings, but let's focus on the in-person and not so much on the Venn diagram of the hybrid in the middle.
Boyan: Hybrid has kind of fallen off favor at ZS, one, because people are really excited to be together in person. And it's more expensive than an in-person event, because you are still paying for the in-person folks, then paying for a great virtual experience as well and connecting those two. When people start to realize, oh, not having people attend in person is still going to be as much money if not more, and it's not going to be the same experience as networking, then why are we heading down this path?
Haag: I'm trying to push forward with hybrid as well as in-person, but we are facing the same challenges. How can we set up a hybrid meeting that is really inclusive for the audience at home without having somebody feel left out? In some cases, it may actually be that some people would like to travel but can't, depending on where they are from.
BTN: How do meetings budgets look for 2022?
Haag: Our fiscal year starts in April, so we are still in the middle of 2021, and probably will only start planning 2022 at the end of the year.
Boyan: We don't have budgets per se at ZS. Each practice area is allotted a budget. If they want to spend that budget on an internal meeting to get together and ideate with team members, then they do. I would say 90 percent of them in 2019 chose to spend some of their budget on what we call internally a summit, and I would anticipate in 2022 we will have that many again.
BTN: Are those smaller meetings? Midsize?
Boyan: Midsize meetings. Anything that comes to my team is generally for 25 people or more. That's when we get involved. In terms of our bigger meetings, like the ones I'm helping to source and plan, those budgets are back to normal. In fact, they've increased because the size of our business has increased.
Bondurant: I think the last comment Suzanne made is really relevant. If a company has done well or stayed similar in their business success today as they were in 2019, budgets seem to be pretty static. But certainly organizations that have not fared well during this time, we're seeing easily 10 percent to 20 percent cuts, if not more. So definitely it depends on the sector or how they fared economically. But I will say that I think the lesson learned from the 2008 downturn is that people are really putting at the top of the priority list meeting with clients again and making sure if they are going back to any type of meeting, it's definitely the client-facing, revenue-generating, pipeline-building meetings.