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When 15,000 meeting and event professionals and 2,800 exhibitors converge on Fira Barcelona Gran Via for the 32nd edition of IBTM World, Nov. 19-21, there will be plenty of new attractions.

The brand-new Event Business Accelerator, an investment and mentoring program, will give young entrepreneurs with an idea, product or service relevant to the industry a chance to work with a mentor and compete in a live pitch competition for cash prizes before a panel of potential investors. It is part of IBTM Accelerate, a new program to showcase the future of MICE and bring innovative ideas to market.

The new Corporate Buyer Programme will offer C-suite and senior industry planners access to an exclusive one-day, peer-led conference.

The event marks the debut of Influencers of MICE, a new series on influencer marketing for the meeting and event industry conceived by Mariska Kesteloo, past president of the MPI Belgium Chapter and founder of Word of MICE, a firm that connects marketing campaigns to influencers. 

And the new Corporate Buyer Programme will offer C-suite and senior industry planners access to an exclusive one-day, peer-led conference addressing the needs and issues facing corporate planners and offering plentiful networking opportunities with their peers.

At a time when many people are realizing the value of meeting in person, the emphasis is on interactivity and making connections.

“We spend every day looking at screens,” says David Thompson, event director of IBTM World. “The best way to communicate is still face to face. If you can do face to face in a positive, exciting and new environment, it creates a more memorable experience.”

Accelerating Entrepreneurship

The Event Business Accelerator is being launched in response to feedback from attendees at the last show, Thompson says. In post-event conversations, many meeting professionals expressed a desire to be more entrepreneurial or learn how to accelerate their business.

“This industry is very entrepreneurial,” Thompson says. “There are lots of one-, two- or three-person event planning businesses. DMCs are often family-run companies. It started to resonate with me.”

When Thompson spoke with Paul Van Deventer, president and CEO of MPI, about what the organization hoped to achieve in the next 12 months, Van Deventer suggested helping smaller businesses, in conjunction with MPI.

“My mind immediately went back to the data and feedback I’ve read from attendees to the show,” Thompson says. “It was quite an easy fit.” 

The resulting Event Business Accelerator program, designed to build the knowledge and confidence of budding entrepreneurs up to age 35, will offer six to eight weeks of weekly training leading up to the show. There will also be online education to learn about how to market their business, how to pitch for new business, how to pitch to investors and other skills. Participants will have mentors assigned to them.

On Nov. 19-20, the mentees will deliver live pitches to a panel of investors on a central stage in a new immersive zone, IBTM Accelerate. This zone will include a lounge-style area and pods where finalists in the contest can share their stories.

“The theme of the zone is about accelerating yourself, your business and your knowledge,” Thompson says. 

Influencer Marketing for Event Industry

IBTM Accelerate will include several interactive discussions, including the Influencers of MICE series; Future Focus, which will look at the future of the MICE industry; and the IBTM World Tech Watch Awards.

The Influencers of MICE series, focused on influencer marketing for the media and event industry, will tap into burgeoning interest in pursuing a career in this area.

“Students who graduated are eager to become an influencer,” Kesteloo says.

Over the three days of the conference, experts on influencer marketing will speak in approximately 10 sessions of 20 to 40 minutes sessions.

Among the presentations will be case studies where influencers will share how they executed a successful campaign.

“It’s a very diverse topic, and we’ve chosen to be as interactive as possible,” Kesteloo says.

There are many misconceptions about what an influencer is, she notes. The program aims to bring greater understanding.

“Many people think, ‘How many followers do they have?’” Kesteloo says. “If they have 50,000 followers and all work in the industry and have a high rate of engagement, that’s much more important than if a person has 100,000 followers.”

Instead of counting an influencer’s followers, Kesteloo defines these thought leaders in a way that’s similar to a Chinese term that translates to “key opinion leader,” viewing influencers in terms of both their knowledge and experience.

Kesteloo started her company, Word of MICE, two years ago to support destinations in need. Living in Morocco for five years, she saw how, when influencers wrote about an event or the country where it was held, it could open people’s minds to visiting a destination.

“If they have a good experience, it will change perceptions,” she says. “It’s really important for the local community.”

High-level Networking for Event Planners

For the Corporate Buyer Programme, conference organizers have identified senior event planners among IBTM World’s attendees and invited them to participate in this portion of the conference to maximize their experience.

Corporate planners will have a chance to book appointments with exhibitors if they wish, but the emphasis will be on giving them time to network with each other.

“They won’t have the requirement to do eight meetings a day,” Thompson says. “They will be able to choose the meetings they want to have.”

After those meetings, the group will adjourn to an exclusive senior planners program that starts at 2 p.m. and continues into the evening.

The gathering will include educational components to encourage conversation, as well as a site tour outside the event, in Barcelona, that will include an exclusive dining experience.

It can be lonely at the top, Thompson says. The idea of this portion of the event is to bring leaders together.

“If you’re the CEO of a big corporation, there are not a lot of people you can confide in,” he says. “There’s an opportunity here for the senior directors to be able to bounce off each other the challenges they may have in their businesses and how they are solving them—and what future issues may come along.” 

Knowledge, Policy and More

IBTM World will include a number of other key highlights. The World Associations Programme will return on Nov. 19, run in partnership with the Association of Association Executives. The one-day conference will include peer-to-peer networking and speakers on topics such as the environmental impact of events.

“There are a growing number of associations coming to the event,” Thompson says.

Another key element of the program is the Knowledge Village.

“They have some fantastic speakers to create a memorable experience,” Thompson says.

One keynote is cave diver John Volanthen, who played a major role in the Thailand cave rescue of the British soccer team. He will be talking about resilience, managing risk and keeping calm in crisis scenarios, with an eye toward the meeting industry, Thompson says.

In addition, on Nov. 18, a day before the conference, the IBTM Global Policy and Practice Forum will bring together a number of leading destinations, national and regional CVBs and policymakers. The purpose, Thompson says, is to build a platform that promotes the power of events and influences policymakers.

“We feel like if we are going to influence policymakers, it’s not about us telling them, it’s about them telling other policymakers,” Thompson says.

Policymakers within government ultimately decide what a country’s policy on MICE will be and how they will invest in MICE to drive events to their city, Thompson says.

“The platform is to discuss intelligent strategies cities and destinations are using to drive their economy,” he says.

Dubai, Thompson says, is a good case in point. Faced with a situation where it almost ran out of the oil that was a major source of its wealth, the city-state focused on building up its tourism industry—and did so quickly, within a decade.

“It has not happened by accident,” Thompson says. “To build up any industry in 10 years is difficult to do.”

Dubai’s tourism industry pulled it off by focusing on building relationships with associations.

“A lot of associations now run their events in Dubai,” Thompson says. “They brought a lot of tourism into that country. The people that attended all of those events have experienced the country and learned how they can set up their own offices in the country.”

In Conclusion

At the end of IBTM World, there will be a white paper on the takeaways from the forum that will be distributed within the industry.

“There are a growing number of stories about how events have changed the landscape of cities and countries and drive their economies,” Thompson says. “However, there are still a lot of governments that don’t really understand the value of MICE or even the industry.”