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More than 90 percent of meeting planners surveyed are using AI in some way as they plan events.
It’s been two years since PCMA introduced Spark, inviting meeting professionals to experiment with a platform designed to leverage generative AI for the business event industry. Spark, which has continually expanded and finetuned its capabilities, now has 10,000 users in 120 countries who use its free and paid versions.
It seemed like a good time to take a pulse check on the overall adoption of AI in the business events industry, said Chantal Sturk-Nadeau, vice president for Spark and PCMA Insights. Working with Gevme, the Singapore-based event technology company that developed the platform, Sturk-Nadeau sent out a survey to meeting professionals last December to gather information about how they and their organizations are using AI.
About the Respondents
The 92 business events professionals who responded to the survey, which was launched last December, hold a variety of roles, including C-suite executives, sales and marketing professionals, consultants, and event planners. The majority identified themselves as being in middle management and most worked in companies with 50 or fewer employees. Nearly half of the respondents — 46 percent — had more than 20 years of experience.
More than nine of out 10 respondents to the survey — 91 percent — reported that they used AI in some way. Of those, 15 percent of respondents are what a survey analysis categorized as “leaders” in the use of AI — companies and individuals who are strategically changing their business processes to take advantage of AI’s capabilities. Another 20 percent are lagging, using AI only minimally and sporadically.
Most of the respondents — 65 percent — fall into the “middle majority.” This group is actively using AI but often limits its use to specific areas or departments, and approaches AI in a fragmented, rather than strategic, way, according to the survey analysis.
Many of them are using AI tools to create content — which is often the first way that business event professionals begin using AI, to boost their productivity, said Gevme CEO Veemal Gungadin, when he and Sturk-Nadeau discussed the survey responses on the Convene podcast with host and digital media editor, Magdalina Atanassova.
That focus on generative AI solely to increase efficiency could cause users to miss the bigger picture — the opportunities organizations have to use AI and their own data to create personalized attendee experiences, including matching attendees with sponsors, or making decisions by “analyzing survey responses at scale, really extracting the insights as a data scientist would,” Gungadin said. “We’re seeing organizations doing these kinds of things, and, in some cases, even changing their business models — creating reports that were partly generated by AI and then selling that to their members. Or getting those reports sponsored because what they’re selling is really the insights.”
Creating stronger operations and marketing models, “knowing how to engage with your audience and how to increase revenue — all of that can come out of the information that you have,” Sturk-Nadeau said. “But it’s through leveraging AI to help you with decision making — I say the gold is really in the analytics side of Spark.”
A comprehensive survey of AI in the business events industry will be released later in the year, but meanwhile, Sturk-Nadeau shared a snapshot of what the survey revealed about the top ways that business event professionals are using AI, followed by their top concerns.
Top Ways to Use AI
Content creation and summarization — 46 percent
Used to generate event descriptions, marketing materials, social media posts, and event session summaries.
Data analysis and reporting — 35 percent
Analyze attendee data, tracking event performance, and generate insights to inform future strategy. Some organizations are beginning to explore the use of AI for predictive analytics, using historical data to forecast attendance, optimize pricing, and personalize event experiences.
Marketing and sales — 25 percent
Personalize event promotions, automate email campaigns, and target specific audience segments with tailored messages.
Event planning and logistics —18 percent
Venue selection, vendor management, registration processes, and attendee communication.
Customer service and support — 11 percent
AI was used least for this function, possibly because of concerns about its ability to handle complex or nuanced customer inquiries effectively.
Top Concerns About Using AI
Data security and privacy — 59 percent
Organizations are concerned about protecting sensitive attendee data, complying with data privacy laws, and maintaining attendee trust and confidence.
The lack of technical expertise — 48 percent
There’s a skills gap and organizations recognize the need to invest in employee training.
System integration — 35 percent
Integrating legacy systems with AI systems can be costly and disrupt ongoing operations.
Loss of human touch — 30 percent
Concern that AI could diminish the human touch that is essential to creating engaging and memorable event experiences. Over-reliance on AI could lead to events that feel impersonal, generic, and lack authenticity.
Ethical concerns — 29 percent
Concern over the potential for AI algorithms to perpetuate existing biases in data, leading to unfair or discriminatory outcomes, as well as the lack of transparency in AI decision-making processes and the need for accountability when AI systems make errors.
Staff resistance — 15 percent
Employees may be more receptive to AI than commonly believed, particularly if they understand how it can enhance their work and improve event outcomes.
How Associations Can Harness Their Data
Convene podcast host Magdalina Atanassova asked Paula Rowntree, DES, head of external engagement for the Australian Psychological Society (APS), to share her advice for how association professionals could use AI and their data to create value. Here’s what she had to say:
I love associations. Hands down, when it comes to collecting the data, [associations] collect data. We do member surveys, we do engagement surveys, we do post-event surveys. We release white papers — we have all of this data coming in.
Most associations don’t have a data analytics specialist. We just don’t have that position. And now we’ve got AI, to be able to actually upload all of that data and tell us our trends. [At APS], we’ve been uploading post-event surveys, but also when someone registers for an event, we ask them two key questions. What do you value most from your membership? And: If we were to be able to provide one product or service that could ease your life as a psychologist — and make you more satisfied — what would that be?
We’ve been collecting that data for the last three years and we’ve never done anything with it because, well, how do we analyze this? But we’ve been able to upload three years’ worth of Excel spreadsheets into AI and ask it to just look at those two questions alone.
And it’s been able to tell us the top five things that members value the most. So all of a sudden, we’ve got our retention and renewal campaigns, we have our campaigns to generate new members. But we’ve also then been able to use AI to break that down via demographics to determine what students want. So, for new membership we can go, well, students really are looking for this, this, and this. And the biggest challenges that they’re facing are this, this, and this.
We’ve also been able to use [that data and AI] to determine what new products and services we can bring in to look at either increasing member satisfaction — if it’s a new product or service that we just include in the current member fee. Or it could be a new product or service which actually helps us generate new revenue and becomes a diversified revenue stream.
On the Web
- Find the Convene Podcast, including conversations about AI and the business event industry.
- Learn more about Spark.
Barbara Palmer is Convene’s deputy editor.