Venues Get in the Hybrid Zone

Forty-six percent of meeting organizers who responded to BTN’s Future of Meetings survey said they would plan hybrid events in the next 12 months. Corroborating that, American Express Meetings & Events has forecast 28 percent of meetings in 2023 will be hybrid. No matter how you look at the numbers, organizers are on the hook to integrate a positive experience for both in-person and virtual participants over the next year.

Hotels have done some good legwork on this. Big brands like Hilton, Hyatt and Marriott have rolled out hybrid meeting suites, but they haven’t necessarily blanketed their portfolios with them. Both hotel companies largely have worked with Encore, the reincarnation of PSAV which acquired Encore Events in 2019, to equip their spaces and provide onsite expertise. Marriott also partners with Encore, but also has formalized relationships with virtual meetings platforms Cvent, Hopin and MeetingPlay as well as offsite production and broadcasting services from Convene. 

“During the pandemic, people certainly leaned on their AV partners to understand delivery of virtual and hybrid,” meetings consultant Betsy Bondurant said, and they still do. 

Forty percent of travel and meeting buyers responding to BTN’s survey said they prioritize a venue’s technology capability when vetting for their events. That percentage roughly corresponds with the percent of survey respondents who said they would pursue hybrid events in the next 12 months. For those who said they would not pursue hybrid, 36 percent cited lack of technical expertise and 33 percent cited additional costs to execute. And that’s the rub: Venue capability almost always translates into costs.

For both Hilton and Hyatt, small groups of about 20 or less can execute a hybrid meeting without invoking additional services and costs from Encore. Any larger, though, and meeting hosts would be looking at increasing costs with the in-house AV provider. The Marriott approach is more customized to integrate with common platforms the meeting organizer may already use, but costs are still there. 

For some, this a la carte business model might not be the answer.

Elevance global travel and meetings director Cindy Heston negotiates with every venue the ability to bring in her own technology and production partnerships. 

“We reserve the right to bring in our own [providers] with no penalties from the venue,” she said. “We don’t know what the costs are, but we want to be able to bid it externally and then determine if the venue offers better value or the external vendor.” What usually works for Elevance is a blend. “We’ll often do the main session, big-ticket items, and the venue does the breakouts. We’ve seen that work really well,” Heston said, adding that Elevance has returned to about 80 percent of its pre-Covid meeting volume, but now runs 60 percent of those in a hybrid format compared to zero prior to the pandemic. 

“It’s a big change,” Heston confirmed in an email.

Other travel and meetings leaders don’t have the bandwidth or appetite to take on the a la carte model or source external providers themselves. They are looking for a more integrated approach with dedicated conference venues like Convene or Etc.venues. 

“We’ve known for a long time about the pain points of audiovisual providers, and it really can hurt,” said Steven Mandelbaum, who half-jokingly invoked the scenario of needing a power cord that you can buy at Home Depot, but instead having to source that from an internal AV provider for a cost and then “paying the AV guy to gingerly uncoil it for you.”

While Mandelbaum said he never likes to go all-in with a specific provider, he acknowledged that the integrated business model, where technology and AV are baked into the overall meetings package is “really compelling for the current scenario” when organizations are looking to scale turnkey solutions, with technologies that are still unfamiliar to many. 

“It’s a model that hotels really need to consider,” said Mandelbaum, “because the Convenes of the world will continue to take their business if they don’t.”