Here are two interesting trends that have not been chronicled for the coming year:
The intriguing……Demographics versus Psychographics
America’s MeetingsNet publication provides the MICE industry with some insights extracted from a recent presentation by Michael Dominguez, Chief Sales Officer at MGM Resorts International, on rising prices.
His presentation was not only about rising prices and inflation, Dominguez wrapped up by talking about how to engage with meeting attendees not only across demographics but across psychographics.
“Demographics are dead,” he said, “Get off the age and study the behaviour.” In other words, a proclivity for tech tools “has nothing to do with age and everything to do with behaviour.” When you customize your conference programmes to the psychographics of your attendees, not to their generations, “that’s what is going to change the experience.”
Good advice to keep in mind.
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The Questionable……Event Venue Announcements
The MICE Academy has picked up on several similar situations in which an event invitation indicates the venue for the event, yet the mentioned venue has no knowledge of the booking reservation!
Delving deeper it would appear that this is a way of awaiting the response to the actual event with paid registrations and then either contacting the venue at the last minute to make the booking and hoping they are available, or seeking another venue also at the last minute and thereafter advising the paid delegates of the change in venue.
In this way the event organizer avoids paying a deposit or providing the final numbers until the very last minute to the unsuspecting venue.
Of course this could be a further reason whereby the industry are assuming that bookings are being undertaken at the last minute which may not be due to last minute decisions but rather avoiding paying the deposits or being held to final numbers in advance.
Interesting, yet concerning new trend?
