Hubb, a leading virtual, hybrid, and in-person event software platform, released data earlier this spring on findings from its 2021 Spring UNTETHERED Design-a-thon Event. The findings confirm the pandemic forced a major change within the industry, with 83 per cent of event professionals surveyed saying they now have experience hosting and/or planning a virtual event, versus only 45 per cent surveyed in the May 2020.
Hubb surveyed more than 1,600 of the event planners who attended the UNTETHERED event this year. Their findings include the following bits of insight:
- 33% have planned at least one large virtual event, up from 9.5% last year;
- 20.25%consider themselves virtual event “experts” in 2021, a huge leap from 4.2 per cent last year;
- 3% haven’t planned or attended a virtual event, in comparison to 14.3% in 2020’s survey.
“These findings prove that event planners moved with urgency and flexibility this past year. The dramatic adoption in virtual event planning will no doubt shape how we proceed as an industry,” said Allie Magyar, CEO of Hubb. “We need to think of events, post-pandemic, in a much different way. Instead of virtual or in-person, events are simply events, and we need to curate the experiences and value based on where attendees will be physically located. And there is a big opportunity in how we connect those audiences.”
Magyar says it’s essential the $400 billion event planning industry understands that the landscape of events has markedly transformed after planners had to rapidly adapt to the virtual platform amid the pandemic.
“The central takeaway from the UNTETHERED Event is how much we as an industry create community. The event planning industry is a people industry. We want the human-to-human connection,” said Magyar.
