Hybrid events were the talk of the town post-pandemic. Cameron Roberts discovers if hybrid capabilities are a deciding factor for event selection.
Hybrid is likely to be a word that will either define events strategy, or will hark back to a pandemic period that represented a time of flux for all events organisers. As Covid-19 becomes a memory for our industry, are hybrid capabilities (that once topped many venues’ lists), still being used to full effect by organisers?
I spoke to Isla Falconer, managing director we are ftw, and Johanna Byrane, head of business development Twickenham Experience Limited, about how planners and venues view hybrid investment in 2022.
Demand dilemma
The real question is, with the return to live, is hybrid even an option that many organisers want to explore? There’s a thirst for meeting face-to-face. Creating hybrid events isn’t easy, it requires two separate teams in many cases – a cost and time commitment that many planners cannot take on.
Falconer spoke about the need for hybrid conferences. She said: “I think that hybrid is the way forward for conferences, awards, watch parties, seminars, and CPD. Some people prefer to be in the room and others prefer to get the time back.
“Where people are failing with hybrid is that they are doing it live, meaning they need to record content to watch post-event. “If you were to avoid hybrid and just say it’s not happening any more, you would be really behind the times.”
So there’s some demand from specific organisations, Johanna Byrane, head of business development, Twickenham Experience Limited, disagreed, saying that “I would honestly say from my point of view, when we get an enquiry, there’s no element of hybrid in most of the ones we receive.”
Instead, for Twickenham hybrid surfaces when government mandates place restrictions on the type of events that can be hosted. She said: “What we found was that maybe going into last Christmas when everything was closing up a little bit again. Suddenly, as part of the planning process, clients were then saying, should we do a hybrid element?”
Byrane pointed out that the return to live is a contributing factor to the downturn of demand on hybrid.
Tools and teams
Should hybrid events be hosted at a venue, the equipment and capabilities on site is top of the list for organisers. But, according to Falconer, the investment into cameras, internet and other hybrid enablement tools is less important than the team on-site at an event. Falconer said: “For us, it’s very much what team is there available on site to ensure that tech doesn’t fail. Can we bring in our own team? A lot of venues don’t allow that, which is highly frustrating when you’ve got a series of events, and you’re working with different tech providers and different venues.”
For utlising venues with hybrid, Falconer suggests organisers look for a venue that can be flexible on the in-house team. She said: “We always try to use venues where there’s some movement on that, where we can bring in part of our own team to ensure that it’s working. “It varies venue to venue but, most of the time, it’s a yes, you can if you pay X amount of money to buy out when the tech is so expensive, because you’re effectively doubling the budget by doing hybrid.” Aside from in-house teams, Falconer did point out the lack of equipment and capabilities in many venues.
She said: “A virtual studio is always amazing, but not many venues actually have that. At this point, I’m surprised because I would have thought, during the pandemic, that would be one of their key priorities.” From the venue side, Byrane said the cost of doing hybrid was also an off-putting factor for many clients, especially combined with the lack of face-to-face interactions between delegates. She said: “Hybrid put off a lot of clients because, once you start doing your budget, it comes out very expensive. Customers would ask, is this worth it? We spend sometimes £10-20,000 on equipment to reach and not see anyone in person.”
The demand for hybrid many be in question, but many venues have worked diligently to enable hybrid events to happen.
The question is not whether the facilities are there, it’s how the value chain for an event works together to facilitate more creative uses of technology that, just two years ago, was indispensable for events.
