The New Event Registration Trajectory
11.01.22
By Lynn Randall, Senior Strategy Director
The New Event Registration Trajectory
Attendees Decision to Attend and Delayed Registrations
Over the summer at our customer event the InVision Exchange, a panel of major technology clients who led large conferences in the spring of 2023 discussed issues facing event marketers. A universal theme centered on attendees’ behaviors and how they’ve changed. Most notably how and when attendees make decisions to attend conferences.
As a strategist, we’re enamored with discovering “the why” of things. So, I set out to figure out why attendees seem to be waiting longer in their decision to attend a conference or event. My conclusion is that there’s no single reason, but a multitude of contributing factors.
The Pain of Business Travel
Let’s start with the most painful of reasons — concerns around air travel. Travel generally, and particularly business travel, has become more difficult and significantly more uncomfortable. Between flight cancellations and delays, reduced flight schedules and limited airline seat availability, business travel is stressful and exhausting at best, and at worst brings no guarantees you’ll get to your destination in time. Over the summer I spoke with an analyst from a major airline who told me, “Business travel timing has historically been roughly two to three weeks in advance, but that’s been cut in at least half — business travelers are largely booking within a week of their departure dates.” This colloquial information is backed up by Hopper research that indicates that domestic travel is booked one week closer to the travelers’ departure date. Since at least 62% of business travel is to attend conferences (Source: Skift), the decision to attend must factor in the toll on the employee as well as the cost to the organization.
Additionally, the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) 2022 Business Travel Index (which includes the impact to conference travel) found that the biggest obstacles to more accelerated recovery in global business travel are persistent inflation, high energy prices, severe supply chain challenges and labor shortages, economic slowdown and lockdowns in China, major regional impacts due to the war in Ukraine as well as emerging sustainability considerations. This led GBTA to the finding that business travel won’t return to pre-pandemic levels until 2026. Which means, these new air travel complexities are making travel appropriately unappealing for conference attendees as well as their organizations for the next several years.
Corporate Spending and Higher Attendee Travel Costs
Attendee or Corporate spend on conferences, as a share of overall business travel spend, is expected to be up 4% in 2022 compared to 2019, according to the Global Business Travel Association. That means the “pent up demand” for conferences our industry has been hopeful in predicting is likely accurate. That said, it’ll cost more to get there and stay there and may be more difficult to justify total cost for participation. According to a June 2022 Cvent/Northstar Media study, airfare costs are predicted to be 16-21% higher with decreased flight availability due to pilot shortages. The same study found hotel costs predicted to be 11-15% higher. So, if you’re thinking of passing along your own cost increases to attendees in higher registration fees, it’s likely to diminish attendance - landing you right back where you started.
COVID Comfortability
Despite recent pronouncements that the pandemic is “over,” that doesn’t mean that suddenly the disease no longer exists. Those of us who lost friends, family, and colleagues to the disease, or who need to play it safe due to being immunocompromised, still feel its presence daily. Those of us who experienced and survived the disease understand that health and safety concerns still play a small role in attendance decisions. It remains important that event audiences aren’t caught wondering what protocols and protections will be provided at events. Earlier in our COVID recovery, attendees experienced uncertainty as to whether an event would or would not proceed, and that delayed their decision to attend until the last minute. Additionally, it’s my belief that virtual experiences “trained” audiences to allow for extreme last minute or even day-of registrations. Of course, all these health and safety concerns are not solely at the comfort or discretion of the attendees themselves. In some cases, corporations have held policies in place that may limit their employees’ exposure or ability to attend events.
In Conclusion
These and other personal reasons (i.e., caring for children or aging parents) contribute to making the issue of delayed or reduced in-person event attendance difficult to solve. That being said, event marketers should plan for delayed registrations, and try not to panic. Registration activity is likened to that of a “hockey stick” in terms of the pace and trajectory – remaining low and slow until alarmingly close to your events, when registrations may shoot up. A recent large-scale technology user conference saw nearly a 100% increase in registrations within 72 hours of their event.
Some tips to address for “hockey stick” registrations begin with your pre-event promotion campaign – maintain communications about your health and safety protocols, or if possible, note when airline sales might be happening and could benefit attendees. We encourage and recommend building personas based on conversations with advisory groups or trusted attendees on your database list. Find out what keeps them from making their decision to attend and create solutions or build in contingency plans to address their specific concerns. Every group is different – and every group is likely quite different than you remember them pre-pandemic.
Has the “hockey stick” phenomena impacted your organization’s event registration pace and trajectory? Reach out to your InVision Account Director or info@iv.com to learn more about how to best prepare for the future.