A new study from Marriott International, Inc. offers insights to help event strategists comprehend, analyze, and assess where and how to drive experience innovation at meetings and events.
“Guiding Principles in Experience Design” has just been released by Marriott with PCMA (Professional Convention Management Association) and CEMA (Corporate Event Marketing Association). Providing a look at consumer drivers and behaviors, the new Marriott study was previewed at the company’s “THE EXCHANGE: Association Masters Customer Conference,” held May 30-June 1 in Phoenix.
“Our research was inspired by the constant cultural shift in meetings and events,” says Glenn Stress, Marriott vice president, Global B2B events and Programs. “The goal … was to identify guiding principles for experiential meetings and events, to further innovate from the traditional conference structure. From our research, we were excited to learn that attendees are interested in more engaging and practical event experiences.”
To develop the new Marriott study, Marriott, PCMA, and CEMA conducted 60-plus one-on-one interviews. Those were followed by a series of global roundtables involving experts and thought leaders in experience design assessing how trends should be integrated into event strategies.
“The goal of this research is to cut through the noise of traditional trend reports and identify behaviors and motivators shaping the future of meetings and events,” Stress says. “From research to practice, we’re looking to provide innovative experiences that break the mold for meetings and drive lasting results with their event attendees and clients.”
Conducted by Storycraft Labs, the new Marriott study identifies six principles that researchers say are intended to drive experience innovation for years to come. They included the idea of exploring identities, in that the role of event designers will be to reimagine networking and create an environment where people feel open enough to stretch their minds and fully participate. “Reimagining networking is about finding greater opportunity for engaging with diverse opinions outside of the usual bubble, and finding multiple new intersections of connection with others,” Stress explains.
The notion that audiences desire choice and want to be involved in selecting the pathways available to them is another. Planners should also want to create a sense of belonging for attendees. Other themes of the new Marriott study included:
- Values: Audiences search for experiences that provide value beyond the dollar, i.e. prioritizing elements like sustainability, inclusion, hybrid channels, community engagement, time, and uniqueness.
- Emotional Data: Understanding the emotional state of participants is key to driving loyalty and decision making, and event strategists need to know how to leverage, consistently measure, and analyze it effectively.
- Power of Play: Event designers may want to create spaces that offer the opportunity to “play” with something—breaking it apart and putting it back together creates new opportunities for ideation and collaboration.
“Play connects function and experience, helps to catalyze content, build teams, define cultures, introduce new ideas, synthesize learnings, and spark joy,” Stress says. “Audiences want to get hands-on and be free to tinker as they make sense of new concepts, and designers will create play-first spaces that celebrate testing and experimentation.”
At the conference, participants were able to divide into smaller groups and try out some of the principles outlined in the new Marriott study in a lab setting. “By breaking out into labs, participants were able to move to an inspiring space to synthesize learnings and begin testing the principles,” Stress says. “The labs allowed for attendees to test the concepts … and walk away with tangible ideas to apply those concepts in their meetings and events.”
