Hubb CEO says planners are looking to a hybrid future

Hubb, a leading virtual, hybrid, and in-person event software platform, today announced data findings from its 2021 Spring UNTETHERED Design-a-thon Event held in mid-March. The findings confirm the pandemic forced a major change within the industry, with a staggering 83% of event professionals surveyed confirming they now have experience hosting and/or planning a virtual event, versus only 45% surveyed in the May of 2020.

Hubb surveyed more than 1,600 of the event planners who attended the UNTETHERED Event this year. Their findings include: 

• 83% have experience planning and hosting virtual events, in comparison to 45% in the spring of 2020
• 33% have planned at least one large virtual event, up from 9.5% last year
• 20.25% consider themselves virtual event “experts” in 2021, a staggering leap from only 4.2% last year
• 3% have not planned or attended a virtual event, in comparison to 14.3% in 2020’s survey

“These findings prove that event planners moved with urgency and flexibility this past year. The dramatic adoption in virtual event planning will no doubt shape how we proceed as an industry,” said Allie Magyar, CEO of Hubb. “We need to think of events, post-pandemic, in a much different way. Instead of virtual or in-person, events are simply events, and we need to curate the experiences and value based on where attendees will be physically located. And there is a big opportunity in how we connect those audiences.

Magyar says it is essential the $400 billion event planning industry understands that the landscape of events has markedly transformed after planners had to rapidly adapt to the virtual platform amid the pandemic.

Although Magyar believes virtual has now sealed its position as a permanent facet of events and marketing, she also foresees in-person events making a come-back of their own. A recent study suggests many people will likely return to attending in-person events in the second half of 2021. Magyar notes that event planners will have to plan more interactive and engaging events, whether in-person or online, with a close tie to building their “community.”

“The central takeaway from the UNTETHERED Event is how much we as an industry create community. The event planning industry is a people industry. We want the human-to-human connection,” said Magyar. The content we gathered is valuable. However, what we heard loud and clear is that networking, small group discussions, building off each other’s ideas, and creating something new together is really what drives people—regardless of whether the format is in-person or virtual.”

Hubb is designed as a single platform that manages virtual, in-person, and hybrid environments. The platform provides both immersive attendee experiences and robust back-end management tools. Hubb’s technology enables meeting planners to bulletproof their event strategy and easily pivot from onsite to online with the press of a button. The Hubb platform allows organizations to create custom, immersive experiences that bring their brand to life.

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