Want to make a Millennial laugh? Tell one what it was like to plan meetings before the World Wide Web took over our lives. Polaroids were the Instagram of the day. Brick-sized mobile phones could only do one thing—call people. Mail-in brochures “instantly” registered you within two weeks. And networking was confined to cocktail receptions where you exchanged a mountain of business cards but not much information.  

“I remember when a conference meant sitting theater-style in a conference room watching hour-long slideshow presentations while snacking on coffee and donuts set up on a table in the back of the room. Then there were the rubber-chicken dinners, where you would sit at a round of 10 shouting hellos across the table—maybe mingling with one or two people,” says Don Ross, vice president of catering and convention services for Caesars Entertainment. “That’s all changed now.”

            And innovative use of technology is the biggest factor in making changes to the conference experience possible, according to hotel executives.

Staying current with trends has allowed Caesars Entertainment, which celebrated the 50th anniversary of Caesars Palace in August, to survive the ever-changing landscape by successfully morphing through the decades.

“We’ve seen a lot of hotels come and go on the Strip,” Ross says. “What keeps us growing is the strength of our brand and leadership who isn’t afraid to try new things.”

Harris Rosen, president and CEO of Orlando’s Rosen Hotels & Resorts, which operates seven hotels with 6,300 total guest rooms, says he considers technology so important for hotels, especially convention hotels, that it is now just above food and beverage on the hotel strata of impact.

“That is the biggest trend I have seen in my 42 years in this industry,” he says.

Analytics and Marketing are the Next Dynamic Duo

Today, you rarely say the word “trend” without matching it to “tech,” and those that don’t study the new dynamic duo—marketing plus analytics—will be as outdated as a Pong video game. 

“When you buy a product on Amazon, they get information on your age, income and buying habits,” says Michael Dominguez (MPI Southern California Chapter), senior vice president and chief sales officer, MGM Resorts International. “Those types of real-time statistics can help in planning.”

For years, Amazon has collected information about what its customers buy and consider buying to direct their service offerings—like when Netflix shows you what you might want to stream next. Software companies such as QuickMobile, Social Tables and Event Farm can use technical, behavioral and aggregate data to give meeting planners that same kind of information.

Dominguez almost laughs when conveying Amazon’s most recent finding.

“Amazon is opening physical stores nationally,” he says. “They learned buyers want to touch and feel new products and have someone to explain features. They found what [the meeting industry] already knows. People need face-to-face interaction.”

Meetings as Experiences

The annual State of the Meeting Industry survey by Destination Hotels—a nationwide network of upscale properties—noted that 61 percent of planners said that, for the first time in years, more than 10 percent of their attendees arrive on-property before the meeting begins or stay after for a mini-vacation. This makes the destination experience a top consideration as planners look for communities that offer recreational appeal.

Caesars Entertainment has long been the arbitrator of things to come. When Caesars noticed more families coming to Vegas, it broadened offerings beyond casinos, built the Forum Shops and offered offsite recreational opportunities such as tours to Nevada’s Red Rock Canyon. 

When entertainment needed diversification, Caesars built The Colosseum and offered stars such as Celine Dion, Elton John and Rod Stewart residencies for long-term commitments and opened the popular Omnia nightclub with international DJ stars such as Calvin Harris. When chefs such as Wolfgang Puck became TV stars, it incorporated the stars’ restaurants into its properties and offered up gourmet dining experiences.

“When I got to Vegas 17 years ago, there were mostly smaller hotel properties providing a high level of service to a select group of people. The food was typical hotel restaurant fare, the rooms were standard,” says Michael Massari (MPI Philadelphia Area Chapter), senior vice president for national meetings and events at Caesars Entertainment. “But in the late 1990s, with the opening of Bellagio, Venetian, Palazzo, Wynn and Encore resorts, the scene changed. Nightclubs opened, entertainment expanded. Vegas went from trade shows for the automobile industry and some association meetings to now—it’s almost all corporate meetings.

“Other cities have some of the things Las Vegas has. Our airport is three miles away and well served by air 24 hours a day. Because we have so many resorts in Vegas, we attract a lot of talent to work here. Because of gambling, we have lots of high-end clientele, so we have 10,000-square-foot villas so you don’t worry about where to put your CEO. Some cities have some of these things. But not everyone has all of these things and that’s what makes Las Vegas great.”

Now, with Caesars bringing the Vegas model to Atlantic City, N.J., Massari says the hope is to develop this expanded “meetings as experience” concept to other key locations.

Smart Hotels Get Personal

Technological personalization will be the new “mint on the pillow.” Soon, expected services will include mobile apps for quicker check-in/checkout and room apps to program in-room lighting, music and personalize video entertainment using Netflix and Apple TV. In-room touch-screen tablets, programmed in multiple languages, will control indoor temperature and order room service, and texting may soon replace the need for in-room landline phones.

Smart hotels will be the preferred choice, as meeting planners look for brands that can meet the expanded technological needs not only for personalizing the participant’s experience but to also provide advanced tech needs for educational and social programs. Hotels already getting the jump on new tech trends include the following.

• Las Vegas’ Aria has a 10-inch touchscreen to control the lights, curtains, do-not-disturb notification and even customizes your room service order.
• Best Western showcased “Li-Fi” last year, introducing 5G technology that could be transmitted through lights, meaning an unprecedented connection speed in rooms.
• Global Hyatt Hotels Corp. properties offer whiteboard walls, responsive social media screens and an integration within their mobile app with transportation giant Uber.

Networking Goes Tinder

With flexible meeting spaces providing comfortable knowledge lounges and convention participants no longer confined to the hotel’s convention center, networking just got more informal and intentional as tech enters the picture. 

“Twenty years ago, we’d throw 3,000 people into a room and say, ‘Here’s your networking opportunity.’  It’s a lot different now,” Dominguez says. “At MGM, we are looking to launch really sophisticated networks into our meetings where I could go on an app, put information in a field to find the five people I should meet and when I get within 50 feet of them my phone will vibrate. This gives me the ability to ask if I could connect directly with them for 10 minutes. That kind of thing didn’t exist before in the meeting industry.”

As peer-to-peer learning becomes the dominant educational style, apps will soon be a prevalent source to customize networking.

Braindater by E-180 is a Tinder-like app where you can offer or request skills on the website, find a match at your convention and meet up in a designated public place to share cutting-edge knowledge for free. At Montreal’s C2MTL conference, E-180 tested its matchmaking website and out of 5,000 attendees, over 1,000 had one-on-one meet-ups. 

Marriott’s Six Degrees—a prototype social network developed with the MIT Mobile Experience Laboratory—combines a series of physical lobby features, including a large interactive digital screen and an LED table that allows people to interact through their phones and social profiles. By using Six Degrees, which connects to a participant’s LinkedIn networks, attendees can learn about each user’s background and meet up for additional networking opportunities.

Virtual Reality Whets the Appetite

When it comes to technology that helps planners choose the site of a meeting, the Destination Hotels survey noted that 41 percent of responding planners say they most often use the internet to research and narrow down potential host properties.

Virtual reality (VR) can help refine the meeting planner’s search by showing the meeting facilities and what participants will enjoy while exploring the destination. It will also allow sales teams to accurately display a ballroom to a client with their event in it, so that clients can visualize the venue.

The Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority recently showcased the Virtual Reality Companion app, which includes 12 immersive Las Vegas VR experiences that can be viewed directly on a smartphone or used with a VR viewer. The app takes potential buyers on a sunset helicopter tour over Las Vegas, driving through Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area or riding a gondola at The Venetian Las Vegas. 

Although virtual reality won’t replace a site visit, it will give meeting planners another tool to make decisions.

Thinking Outside the Box Lunch

Bob Rauch, CEO of San Diego-based RAR Hospitality, recently completed a study that verified Millennials like a personalized, gourmet experience for a reasonable price. This is producing new designs in lobby bars and hotel restaurants to accommodate quick lunches and networking spaces for Millennials who like to call themselves a “party of one” but “hanging out together.”

Caesars’ upscale Forum Food Court expands dining options outside time-consuming, sit-down lunches during conferences. As networking moves out of the ballroom, participants can meet up over a bite of gourmet pizza or Thai food with time to still get back to the educational program.

With food and beverage pricing ranking as the third-most-critical factor in placing meetings among Destination Hotels survey respondents, hotels are working hard to offer strategies to discount F&B such as “menu-matching,” whereby a group has meals with the same ingredients wasith another onsite group’s meals or the property’s onsite restaurants can cost-share.

“Food and beverage has changed. Final night banquets are few and far between. Receptions are not just finger food,” Ross says. “They have food stations and tapas-style specialties served on nine-inch plates individually dressed by a chef. We have private dining rooms in our celebrity chef restaurants or we can create menus for conventions with the best chefs in world. We bring this flare into the convention world.”