In my career as a journalist, I’ve gone from print to web, then from web to mobile and now I’ve gone from physical events to virtual and hybrid.

Each time, it has meant surrendering old territory but always gaining new ones. Each moment creates an opportunity to create a new space, a new world.

The meetings industry – business events or that which is called MICE – is at such a moment in history. No industry is more vulnerable in a Covid-19 world. When you can’t have people be within two metres of each other in one space, and we don’t know for how long, you have a problem. And the most vulnerable sector within it are those huge trade exhibitions which are, by their scale and nature, arguably harder to move completely online.

But Covid-19 has forced the industry to adopt tech in a massive way. And while there are those in the sector who argue that virtual exhibitions are nothing new, they will agree though that this moment is new. We’ve never had a moment like this where there’s a perfect convergence of factors that changes everything – state of technology, better connectivity where streaming Netflix has become as easy as drinking tea, consumer acceptance of new norms and economic constraints.

And so the trade exhibitions industry has had to look at itself in the mirror, and ask some hard questions, which is what the WiT Virtual on “Rethinking Trade Exhibitions”, in partnership with the Singapore Tourism Board and Singapore Exhibition and Convention Bureau, on 7 July attempted to do.

Travel, communications or marketplaces – what business are you in? Is it about room nights or Passion?
Questions such as is it in the travel business or communications or marketplaces? If it’s the latter, then does it matter if people can’t fly on planes or sleep on hotel beds to do business? Communications is organic, ongoing. Marketplaces don’t ever shut down.

To the question on whether tourism boards and convention bureaus have to change the lens through which they incentivize exhibition organizers, Jean Chia, president, South-east Asia, Pico Group, said, “All industries are being disrupted. I think they need to also get themselves updated and stay relevant and expand their current matrix of so-called measurements on KPIs as deemed necessary. We are now beyond just the traditional mode of calculating visitors, visitors, room nights or tourism spend or multiplier effect.”

Pico Group’s Jean Chia proposes building a dashboard of virtual destination content that can be used by organisers to offer attendees in events.

Relating that to Singapore which has pivoted in its destination marketing promise to “Passion Made Possible”, she said a longer perspective may need to be taken if Singapore really wants to deliver on that promise of passion. Citing the F1 night race, she said, it has a longer effect – the community building, featuring Singapore in a different light – and different KPIs might be necessary for trade shows in the new world.

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