2021 may followed a pretty bizarre and unforeseen year of 2020, but it started strong with more confidence than many of us might have predicted. Read through and learn about what are the predictions for the Events Industry of 2021, what shall we expect and what are the new normalities that came along.

Events professionals support that, in 2021, the events industry will manage to reach a 50% of its business compared to pre-COVID-19. A substantial portion of 40% suggests that this change will happen in 2022, while a small percentage expects this to happen in 2023. As per the full recovery of the industry, a 40% believes that it will occur in 2023, whereas a quarter of the industry suggests that this will happen in 2022. Only a minority supports that they will recover 100% in 2021.

The return to pre-COVID-19 standards corelates greatly to the development of the vaccine and the reset of safety within the society. Meanwhile, event professionals expect that social distancing will remain at the forefront. This means smaller events, smaller amount of audience in big venues and flexible seating layouts. The use of outdoor spaces is also expected to maximise as well as the need of indoors spaces to be aired frequently.

Online events, webcasts and the use of livestreaming services and augmented reality have been on a great demand and managed to become a normality in 2021. Through digitalisation businesses managed to reach remote audiences which was hard to reach before and enhanced their game through the latest technology. They even managed to do that on a lower budget as virtual events are cheaper than organising live physical events.

Event experts support that this shift to digitalisation came to stay in post-COVID-19 era, but not in a way that it will substitute physical events but it will complement and enhance them. They support that technology will develop even further with a greater degree of personalisation. In conferences, summits or expos guests can receive personalised schedules and suggestions of products to purchase or groups to network with through the use of apps and gamification. In that way, audience engagement will be increased and extraordinary experiences will be created.

One is for sure; the way professionals used to operate in pre-COVID era was no longer on demand and they needed to reinvent new methods to engage audiences. The barriers and struggles event industry faced in 2020 helped professionals develop a creative and an out of the box mindset.

The future of the events’ industry seems confident and with resilience events professionals will keep adopting to new ways to celebrate the special moments and achievements of their clients and navigate through 2021!