After a long time working in events, I have had the opportunity to witness a number of shifts and changes in this industry but nothing like the recent pandemic which forced us all into unchartered territories in all aspects of the day-to-day running of our businesses.
This had an inevitable impact on our future and has made our expectations shift and change for good.
I have always been a firm believer that events should be organised in such a way that people remember the things that they do and the people that they meet and one way of doing so is to introduce experiences to b2b events.
Eight years ago, when I came up with this brand new concept, I met many executives who did not believe this was the way of conducting business meetings.
Including experiences which were fun and by default memorable were deemed as non professional.
Fast forward almost a decade on, and everyone is doing it.
And now onto the next big shift.
My view is that having one-to-one meetings in the back of a ballroom or a hall exhibition centre, for as much as these may be held in a beautiful destination, it is still locking people away from the culture beyond the doors.
Meeting events should happen whilst experiencing destinations and making sure that these experiences will be remembered for the future and form the basis of trusted and long-lasting business relationships.
There is nothing more powerful than experiencing first-hand what the destination has to offer whilst at the same time, meeting the people that matter. Those people who will ultimately be partnering together to build powerful packages and dreams that are being offered by travel agents on a daily basis.
It's not a fam-trip, it's not a business-to-business meeting, it's a FAM-Meeting.
The only thing left is, to leave it to us, the event organisers, to make everything work smoothly, ensuring suppliers and buyers do business and build trust during the FAM-MEET event.
FAM-MEETINGS are a blend of a multitude of memorable destination-led activities to be experienced together with your meeting partner.
The first FAM-MEET of its kind is happening in Ronda this October and I cannot wait to deliver it together with Miguel Guerrero of Ronda Tourism, Renee Kachler of Costa del Sol and their fantastic, high-performing teams.
Ciao ciao,
Micaela.