Meeting Professionals International is planning to announce a decision soon on any changes to its signature education event, the World Education Congress.

WEC Grapevine, with a theme of Reunite for Recovery, has been scheduled for early June in Grapevine, Texas. With the COVID-19 pandemic, MPI, like many organizations with meetings and events this summer, is looking at options.

“We are closely monitoring the worldwide pandemic pacing and government travel guidelines, using that data to evaluate several options and scenarios,” Paul Van Deventer, president and CEO of MPI, said Tuesday during MPI’s Global Meetings Industry Day: Virtual, a daylong, worldwide broadcast event. “Our goal is to create a live experience, rich in education and connection, that people feel comfortable about attending in-person while staying intensely focused on the Duty of Care of delivering a safe, secure and healthy environment—as well as also offering a high-quality streaming option for those who want to attend virtually. 

“We intend to announce our final plans very soon, but, as many of you will know, there are numerous complexities and intricacies in adjusting a complex conference like WEC with many partners involved in the decision process.”

Van Deventer said he has heard from meeting industry professionals who want face-to-face meetings and events to return.

With the COVID-19 pandemic, MPI, like many organizations with meetings and events this summer, is looking at options.

“Our community wants to get back together and WEC Grapevine will be a rallying cry for our meeting and events community to REUNITE FOR RECOVERY,” he said. “We’ll reconnect and rekindle the flames of business. And, perhaps most importantly, we’ll gather once again with our colleagues, our community, our family.”

Van Deventer said MPI fully recognizes that every individual’s situation is in flux right now—between job losses, company travel freezes, etc.—and that MPI is offering a refund exchange to accommodate anyone who registers to attend WEC live.

He said MPI is working with the host property, the Gaylord Texan, on new efforts the hotel and Marriott will be putting in the place focusing on wellness.

“We’re not going to just be looking at the clinical wellness; we’re looking at the mental wellness as well, so it’s the whole-body experience,” Van Deventer added. “We’ll be testing some new approaches, bringing a lot of the content focused on pandemic response—how should you manage your own event and things you should be doing.”

He said there is a pent-up desire and demand for face to face.

WEC Grapevine: REUNITE FOR RECOVERY

“I feel it in myself, I hear it from our community,” Van Deventer said. “People are getting by with some of these virtual experiences being able to survive through this, but the desire is there. There’s going to be a hesitancy at first just like I felt after 911 that first time I got on an airplane. I think that desire to socialize, to interact, is going to overcome. I believe strongly our regulations, our government, our destinations are going to be putting the right procedures in place to protect us and we’ll just have to build confidence slowly.”

Van Deventer was asked during the broadcast to look into his “crystal ball” and predict when meetings in general might return.

“It’s obviously going to be a lot more regional than global,” he said. “There are going to continue to be pockets of areas that are constrained and constricted on their travel, but I would say in my crystal ball, coming out of the spring and early summer meetings will begin to occur, maybe not on the scale they were.”

Van Deventer said he is optimistic that events in Las Vegas will be back by early September and “we’ll be meeting as an industry at IMEX America and gathering with a lot of gusto and getting to see each other again.”

“So, until we meet again and have weathered this crisis, please take care of yourselves,” he said. “I look forward to the time when we gather and reunite to celebrate the recovery of our industry. Because when we meet, we change the world. Until then—stay safe and stay well.”