How AI is solving the event industry's biggest challenges
Discover how AI is the key to unlocking effective meetings and events programmes and streamlining every stage of planning and execution.
Discover how AI is the key to unlocking effective meetings and events programmes and streamlining every stage of planning and execution.
It’s well known that artificial intelligence is no longer the imaginative plaything of sci-fi writers and futurologists. 2024 has been the year of generative AI, with Open AI, Bard, Claude, and Midjourney cementing themselves into the public consciousness. ‘Using Chat GPT’ is now a ubiquitous term. The speed at which this happened is measurable; in the latest McKinsey Global Survey on AI, 65% of respondents report that their organisations regularly use generative AI, nearly double the percentage from the previous survey, just ten months prior. As I write this, Apple has just announced the iPhone 16 – a device billed as the first ‘generative AI iPhone’. Nonetheless, there is a big gap between those companies using AI daily, and those who don’t even know where to begin. I commissioned this report to demystify and educate, democratising the ground for events industry professionals who can benefit from pragmatic and practical AI tools.
Generative AI is, of course, only one subset of a much wider technological movement. In my experience, the terminology surrounding the conversation can get a bit slippery. Artificial Intelligence (AI) enables machines to simulate human intelligence, progressing from Alan Turing’s foundational ideas in the 1950s. Machine Learning, a subset of AI, automates data learning and was popularised in the 1980s. Deep Learning, which refines this process, uses complex neural networks to analyse data, gaining significant attention in the 1990s. Generative AI, emerging strongly with Generative Adversarial Networks in 2014, creates new content from learned data patterns showcasing the broadening applications of AI, in particular with the arrival of large language models (LLMs). LLMs are trained on massive amounts of text data and at the time of writing the latest version of CHAT GPT 4 is multi-model combining text, images and voice.
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Within the events industry, I have said for a while that we cannot afford to ignore the cutting-edge developments of this technology. Yes, our industry is defined by person-on-person experiences, it is what makes it such a rewarding sphere of work. Yet meetings and events have not been left untouched by the democratisation of access to Generative AI. We are at a pivotal moment where the integration of AI technologies, particularly generative AI, is reshaping how we plan, execute, and experience events. At HeadBox, we're already leveraging AI to streamline operations, reduce in-person site visits, and analyse data more efficiently. This frees up our team to concentrate on what truly matters: creativity, strategy, and curating personalised attendee experiences. By enhancing our toolkit with AI, we are not replacing the human element; we are augmenting our capabilities to create more meaningful, engaging, and successful events. As we move forward, our commitment is to stay at the forefront of this technological integration, ensuring that AI serves as a catalyst for innovation and enhanced creativity in our industry.
What's most exciting in 2024, is that many of these capabilities already exist. To keep you informed, I created an in-depth report on the innovations the event industry is embracing. This report will take a long view of the past, present, and future practices that make up the meeting and events landscape.
In our last roundup of cutting-edge event tech, I issued a challenge to industry leaders, asking: What are you going to do about AI-powered digital transformation and the changes that come with this? Well, it’s time to take a broad look at the answers.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly changing the technological landscape of our world, across several industries. From chatbot assistants to suggested content on media platforms, there’s little it has yet to touch. It may seem daunting, and you’re bound to ask yourself questions like Are robots taking over? or How do I know that this Facebook photo is real? The reality is that AI can make day-to-day life simpler, minimising your task list so you have more time to enjoy what matters. In the events world, an industry that relies almost solely on human-to-human interaction, it might seem like Artificial Intelligence isn’t welcome. However, it very much is, and we can see that 63% of event planners are already using AI. It doesn’t mean it’s replacing humans completely, but rather existing in support of in-person events. Whether it’s to find unique venues, write messages, draft proposals, translate emails to bookers abroad, translate data from emails or voice calls into structured briefs or help with admin tasks, it improves efficiency and helps both bookers and clients in the planning process.
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When faced with an event brief, it can be natural to resort to old-world tactics: manually searching, calling venues, and re-booking the same place your team has been going to for years. The demand for events has surged post-pandemic: according to a 2023 study by Bizzabo, 52% of organisers reported increased attendance at their B2B in-person conferences in the past year, and 86% of organisers plan to maintain or increase the number of in-person events in 2024. Despite this growth, events teams remain small, suffering from massive pandemic layoffs, meaning marketing teams have to juggle multiple hats – keeping up to date with current trends, planning exciting in-person (and sometimes virtual or hybrid) events, and making spreadsheets on top of it all.
AI helping with event planning doesn’t mean that it’ll reduce jobs, or completely remove humans from the process. Mainly, it’s used to automate time-consuming tasks, so that finding venues takes less time, invites get sent earlier, and organising the event no longer feels rushed and stressful. Ryan Grieve, Head of Meetings and Events at HeadBox says AI has helped massively with venue searching.
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AI tools have a reach beyond sponsored and popular venues, and an ability to source those hard-to-find venues that may be a perfect match for the client's needs. Ideally, the algorithm can learn from past behaviours within one team or company to gradually find better venues at a faster rate. Once you find a list of available and appropriate venues and share it with a client (or go through it yourself), you can spend more time adding things that’ll make the event special for those who attend. This is where the human touch comes in. The HeadBox team uses the curated list to simplify their search but goes more in-depth with those narrowed-down options to ensure they align with customer tastes. “AI can’t qualify or quantify personal opinions,” says Turner. “You can’t generalise a certain vibe or style across the industry – they mean something different to every client.” That special unique touch, whether it’s an ode to a guest speaker, a favourite meal amongst employees, or a venue that just feels right, is (for now, at least) impossible to achieve with AI. Streamlining the process with AI allows more time for the focus, creativity, and excitement needed when planning an event.
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At face value, booking an event at a venue should be a simple process; a confirmation email, a quick phone call, and a seamless synchronicity between planners, suppliers, and key stakeholders. As anyone who’s worked in the industry for more than a day will tell you, the reality on the ground is much more nuanced, time-consuming, and mired in a horizon-spanning train of emails, spreadsheets, phone calls, and site visits.
If there is one clear refrain coming from the AI chorus, it is that where there is a proliferation of paperwork and fluff, there is potential for AI-assisted streamlining. Of course, assisted here is the key word; while the booking process can be instrumental in alleviating administrative drudgery, those working in the events industry are essential.
With this in mind, we’re splitting the booking process into three distinct phases that prove promising for technological intervention, event proposals, site visits, and contracting.
"It is important to remember that AI is the copilot – the event professional is still the pilot, ensuring that human creativity and personal touch remain at the forefront."
In the traditional event booking process, the proposal stage is often fraught with inefficiencies: endless back-and-forths over emails, spreadsheets expanding into infinity, and hours spent just keeping track of client requests. This cumbersome approach made for slow turnarounds and excessive administration, which drained valuable time from both planners and venues.
Without technological aid, event proposals involved significant manual input, especially when it came to tailoring responses to client needs. Changes often necessitated constant communication, leading to chaotic and lengthy email threads. Proposals were locked into static formats like spreadsheets that lacked the dynamic flexibility necessary for quick adaptations.
The advent of AI in the proposal phase has radically streamlined this process. Tools like HeadBox’s AI-powered solutions have allowed venues and planners to replace traditional paper trails with dynamic, real-time digital proposals. AI-driven systems now tailor proposals based on client preferences, location, and even historical data of similar events, cutting down the time needed to generate offers from days to mere minutes.
AI doesn't just accelerate the process, it also improves accuracy. For example, with platforms like Guesty's AI, property managers are now automating responses to enquiries, ensuring that personalised solutions are delivered almost instantaneously.
This shift from manual to automated engagement marks a huge leap in efficiency, without sacrificing the personal touch required to win contracts.
Site visits have long been a necessary chore in the booking stage of large events. No events professional worth their lanyard would confirm a venue booking without ensuring the space lived up to its promise. For the international community, this meant expensive flights, large carbon footprints, and eating whatever mush Jet2 was serving up on a Wednesday evening.
Stakeholders often had to dedicate entire days out of the office to physically tour multiple venues. For large-scale events, these site visits often required several key decision-makers to attend, further complicating the process.
Artificial Intelligence has already made clear, material gains in this sector; with AI and augmented reality tools, event planners can now offer virtual site visits, providing immersive 3D experiences without the need for their physical presence.
HeadBox's 3D Studio is an excellent example of how virtual site visits save both time and resources. Instead of spending half a day travelling to various venues, clients can attend virtual tours in minutes, getting a tactile sense of the space, before being given a tour that feels completely bespoke to them. Bespoke is the key word here. You can tailor the 3D tour to specific languages, and highlight different setups, decorations, and layouts; you can generate a tour in German in the morning, and then a tour in Spanish before lunch. Embracing Artificial Intelligence should not leave any client with a sense of artifice.
These virtual site visits not only lower costs but also minimise the environmental impact, aligning with the industry’s growing focus on sustainability. This significant reduction in the carbon footprint of physical site visits is a key consideration in the current ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) era, where 70% of organisations are on track to achieve the government’s 2030 Net Zero target.
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It’s no secret that the contracting phase has always been a source of potential bottlenecks in event bookings. No matter how many times you watch Lincoln Lawyer, contracting will never be sexy. Contracts are dense, often requiring manual reviews by legal teams and event planners. The back-and-forth required to address concerns about clauses, terms, or potential liabilities slows the process, delaying final confirmations and impacting the overall event timeline.
AI has already brought transformative efficiency to contracting. Platforms now use AI-powered systems to scan contracts, flag potential risks, and identify inconsistencies, allowing quicker turnaround times.
As HeadBox’s CFO Lucy Lowry mentions, AI-powered contract review tools not only streamline the legal review process but also help in simplifying complex legal terms.
Adobe Sign is an example familiar to many, even those outside the direct AI sphere. Adobe made the in-person aspect of contract signing redundant as far back as 2005, but AI takes it a step further by recommending edits and changes based on previous booking behaviours and contractual data. This allows event professionals to focus more on strategic decision-making and client relationships instead of getting bogged down in contract minutiae.
Finding and booking your venue is the easy part. Now you’ve got to handle attendance, suppliers, merchandise, design, activities, A/V, scheduling … you name it. This is the most creative – therefore personal – part of events. Building relationships with and within your attendees is something AI can’t replicate. In fact, why does it need to? The relationship between humanity and AI technology shouldn’t be a tug-of-war, but more like a see-saw. When AI takes on menial tasks, it allows more room for creative thinking and idea development around events.
We’re entering a new era of event management with the inclusion of AI. It’s not something to be scared of – it’s perhaps the most exciting time for events ever. The best part about event planning is the endless possibilities for creativity and imagination. Less time on spreadsheets means more time for connection and collaboration and that’s what events are all about.
Managing an event starts way before the first sip of champagne at the reception, and most administrative tasks are related to two key things: registration and suppliers. Registration can be streamlined with AI tools in a few ways: for instance, attendees can opt-in to data analysis, which can use available registrant data (like LinkedIn profiles) to add personalisations for guests and valuable information for organisers. Attendance and check-in can be automated, and event chatbots can provide attendee support, customise schedules, and answer routine questions. As for suppliers, not only can generative AI produce a list of vendors in the area for external catering, decoration, and photography, but it can also come up with ideas for keynote speakers and panellists within a specific radius. In the long term, AI can use predictive analytics to suggest vendors according to previous habits, so there’s less weeding through.
There are many ways to use AI when planning what will happen during the event. Generative AI tools like Spark or ChatGPT can be used to create an agenda complete with keynote and panel topic suggestions when given information on an event’s purpose. It can also create bios and introductions about speakers using available information, which can be useful for large, multi-day events. Audience engagement tools like Zenus can provide valuable insights on how well an event resonates with speakers using facial analysis. As for networking, AI matchmaking tools Grip and Brella use attendee information to tailor connections among attendees and find mutual availability.
One key way in which AI can enhance person-to-person interactions is translation. Whether it’s an avatar doing live sign language, adding subtitles to video and audio content, or doing real-time translation for international events, AI-powered translation tools can help foster connections and make your event more inclusive. Further on inclusion, AI can contribute to menu planning to ensure dietary restrictions and allergies are accounted for and provide cultural context for events abroad.
An experiment recently conducted by PCMA placed humans against AI in an event-planning competition, competing four teams using AI against one fully human team. It might not be surprising that the human team outperformed the four AI teams, “delivering a suite of ideas that blended creativity with practicality – including scholarships and discounts, a creative spouse program, [and] package deals for various attendee personas.” One can assume, though, that if the human team was tasked with time-consuming admin tasks like transportation and logistics, marketing and promotion, and scheduling, they may not have the time or energy to put together the same level of ideas.
AI automates tasks, analyses data, and provides insights for events but it can’t replace empathetic decision-making, which is necessary when it comes to things that require more ethical consideration or nuance. For example, AI can’t read a client’s expression of hesitation, which can then be explored in a more in-depth discussion. These human touches – whether it’s supplying a client’s favourite coffee brand, providing a discount, or just asking how their family is – can build lasting business relationships.
It’s important to understand that AI acts like an assistant and not a manager. By streamlining all the smaller tasks that take up so much of our time, AI lets us think about the big picture. We can zoom out and ask: What’s the wider purpose of this event? Is it to educate? To share? To connect? Whatever it may be, this initial question moves us toward more purposeful event management.
"AI should act like an assistant and not a manager".
In today’s data-driven world, tracking the success of events has become a top priority for businesses. It's no longer enough to simply host an event – companies want to see the data that proves ROI, enhances engagement, and supports sustainability initiatives. With pressure mounting to deliver these insights, tracking event performance has become an essential part of the event planning and execution process.
However, the challenge is not in gathering data – it’s in interpreting it. As we’ve seen with AI’s role in planning and booking, the technology can turn what would normally be hours of manual work into something streamlined and actionable. The same applies to tracking event performance: AI is helping planners make sense of the flood of data in real time, giving them insights they can use.
Tracking an event’s performance used to mean spreadsheets full of numbers that didn’t always tell the full story. Event planners often struggled with figuring out what data was important and how to turn it into something their stakeholders could understand. Today, with growing expectations around sustainability and engagement, there’s more pressure than ever to track metrics beyond simple attendance numbers.
Take sustainability, for example. According to ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) targets, 70% of organisations are on track to meet the government’s 2030 Net Zero goals. As a result, companies expect event planners to track carbon footprints, waste reduction, and energy use, alongside traditional engagement metrics. It’s a lot to juggle, and without the right tools, this kind of tracking can feel impossible.
AI tools have stepped in to simplify data tracking. Instead of wading through complicated metrics, AI can gather, analyse, and interpret the data for you, giving you insights you can present to business leaders quickly and clearly.
AI takes the guesswork out of data analysis, enabling event professionals to focus on making real-time decisions that enhance the attendee experience. It also breaks down data into simple, digestible metrics, offering insights into how engaged attendees were during the event and highlighting areas for improvement. This data is invaluable in planning future events and ensuring that each event builds on the success of the last.
ROI (Return on Investment)
Traditionally, event ROI was measured by basic attendance and revenue metrics. However, the focus has shifted towards event experience and engagement. AI makes it easier to track how attendees interact with your event, from session attendance to networking activities, and integrate these interactions back into overall business goals.
Engagement
Understanding how engaged your attendees were during the event is crucial. AI tools can track real-time feedback, sentiment analysis, and interactions across digital platforms, offering a deeper understanding of what worked and what didn’t. By analysing this data, AI helps planners enhance future events and refine strategies.
Sustainability
AI tools are already helping companies monitor and reduce their event carbon footprints. AI can track energy usage, travel emissions, and waste production, giving organisers the data they need to meet sustainability goals. This aligns with the growing focus on environmental impact and corporate responsibility.
At HeadBox, we’ve developed AI-powered tools that make tracking easier and more effective. HeadBox Insights provides real-time dashboards, showing you exactly how your event is performing while it’s happening. Instead of waiting for post-event reports, you can make adjustments on the fly, ensuring that every aspect of the event runs smoothly. From tracking session attendance to engagement rates, Insights helps you stay on top of the data that matters most.
HeadBox Zero is a tool designed to help event organisers track and reduce their environmental impact by helping event planners make the most sustainable choices at the point of booking. As sustainability becomes a growing priority, event planners are under pressure to show how their events align with corporate ESG targets. HeadBox Zero tracks your event’s carbon footprint, giving you actionable insights to make greener choices.
As AI evolves, its role in event tracking will only grow. Currently, AI doesn’t just help planners look back at what worked, it can predict what will work. AI-powered predictive tools provide tailored insights for each event, enabling planners to make smarter decisions about everything from sustainability practices to attendee engagement.
The HeadBox tool, Journeys, for example, helps empower event bookers to make the most sustainable venue choices before they decide which venue to book. This is proving essential to helping corporate clients reduce the carbon impact of their meetings and events programmes.
Up to 80% of carbon emissions for in-person events come from travel to and from the venue. This means the location of a chosen venue has the single biggest impact on how sustainable an event is.
Most solutions in the market measure an event’s impact after it has taken place in the hope that the emissions can be offset. Journeys helps companies with emissions reduction by giving event organisers the information they need to make greener choices before an event is booked – when they are deciding on their venue and its location.
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The transformative potential of Generative AI in the meetings and events (M&E) industry is undeniable. The pace of innovation is accelerating, and businesses that fail to embrace AI will inevitably fall behind. AI will not replace event planners, but event planners who use AI will replace those who don’t.
It is clear that user experience and efficiency are the two key areas where generative AI will have the most impact:
User Experience: AI enhances personalisation, improves attendee engagement through real-time data analysis, and streamlines decision-making, making events more immersive and tailored to individual needs.
Efficiency: AI automates administrative tasks, such as venue searches, proposals, and contract management, allowing event professionals to do more with fewer resources and focus on strategic, creative work.
By leveraging AI, event planners can focus on what they do best: creativity and relationship-building. AI handles the repetitive tasks, while the human touch ensures the event’s unique and personal feel.
At HeadBox, our AI-powered platform is at the forefront of this transformation, empowering bookers to plan smarter, faster, and more efficiently. With tools like HeadBox Insights and HeadBox Zero, we deliver seamless, memorable event experiences while meeting sustainability goals and driving real-time performance insights.
Embracing AI in the M&E industry is no longer optional—it is essential for those who want to stay competitive and deliver exceptional event experiences.
