Held at the Sands Expo and Convention Center at the Venetian in Las Vegas last week, IMEX 2016 raised the bar once again. Here are 5Â highlights if you missed the show.
Record-breaking attendance
This year’s IMEX was the biggest to date, with 3,250 exhibitors—a 4.8 percent increase over last year. Between the daily keynotes, Smart Monday and sessions held all week on the show floor, there were also a record 269 educational sessions.
Meeting room of the future
IACC CEO Mark Cooper presented highlights of a survey of 65 member venues, showcasing techniques they are using in their newly defined role of “experience creation”—everything from themed food and beverage to outdoor meeting rooms to furniture/equipment that allows for multiple flexible layouts. Find the survey here.
The hotel-planner relationship
Prevue Editor Barbara Scofidio and Incentive Research Foundation President Melissa Van Dyke introduced their new joint survey about the highs and lows of the hotel-meeting planner relationship to a standing room-only crowd. Challenged by e-RFPs, mergers, yield management and the seller’s market, both sides agreed that they are under pressure like never before. Find a white paper on the survey here.
Sharing economy
A packed session revealed the repercussions of the sharing economy on hotels and transportation, including some surprising statistics. Airbnb, for one, revealed that it will book one billion room nights per year by 2025. All you needed to do was ask any Vegas cab driver to learn that their business has been significantly affected by Uber and Lyft. See this IMEX blog.
Wowmakers
Hilton launched its largest-ever B2B marketing initiative, celebrating exceptional events and the planners who planned them, among them Mindy Halpert, who turned a ballroom into a campsite with trees, tents and an indoor campfire and Jack Ezon, who recruited 100 Maasai tribespeople to greet a group of people traveling to Tanzania. Check out the feel-good program’s “Museum of Wow.”
