The past year has seen a new trend emerge in the event planning industry with hybrid events. These have a lot to offer, with the best of both physical and virtual events in one place. While these events had been happening before, especially in the tech and gaming industry, COVID-19’s social distancing and lockdown protocols really showcased their potential.
What Are Hybrid Events
A hybrid event mixes both physical and virtual event elements for a complete and accessible experience, regardless of location and physical presence. Experts predict that 66.5% of event professionals are planning to shift towards hybrid events. This is because they are extremely convenient to attend, and get much more engagement than physical events.
If you’ve hosted a physical event before, you know what it takes to bring together exhibitors, attendees, and industry experts to the same place at the same time. You need considerable time and resources to successfully host an in-person event. Virtual events are easier to host, but may dampen the experience for people who are in the area and would like to attend your event in-person. The hybrid model makes everyone happy, and comes equipped with numerous other benefits as well.
What Are The Benefits Of Hybrid Events
Hybrid events offer a lot of benefits to all parties involved. Whether you’re an organizer, exhibitor or simply an attendee, you stand to gain significantly from such a conference. Its benefits range from convenience to post-event metrics, and much more.
Increase Your Reach With Hybrid Events
Going back to physical events after a long period of time will be quite overwhelming for many people. This is because numerous people are still following COVID-19 precautions or may simply not be able to travel. Furthermore, it is difficult to take out time and resources to attend an event in another city or country.
Therefore, hybrid events are the perfect solution for this problem. They can help increase your reach immensely, as you won’t be limited to just your physical audience. You can attract people from all across the globe to participate in your event from the comfort of their homes.
Attract High-Profile Speakers
As is the case with participants, speakers may also find it difficult to take time out to talk at a physical event. They need to commit a considerable amount of time to travel to a venue, and just speak for an hour or so on a panel. This commitment may make high-profile speakers miss your event if it’s completely in-person.
However, if you host hybrid events, the speakers who can make it will come, while the rest will be able to take time out to participate online. This requires much less commitment, and you’ll be able to attract high-profile speakers. These speakers, in turn, will pull in a larger audience, both physical and virtual.
Offer A Positive User Experience
While both physical and virtual events have their own set of benefits and fun features, hybrid events offer the best of both worlds. The virtual environment is easy to navigate and attempts to emulate the physical experience as much as possible. In the meanwhile, it has its own outstanding features such as 3D event halls, replayable webinars, networking chat rooms and a host of other facilities.
This lets both on-site and virtual visitors enjoy the event to its fullest, without compromising on convenience. This positive user experience makes hybrid events well worth it, and is continuously improving day by day.
Provide Extensive Insights For Hybrid Events
When it comes to hybrid events, hosts and booth owners can easily track visitor attendance and engagement insights. The event will record every user interaction, and help companies measure ROI.
These insights are quite valuable, as they can help you get sponsors on board as well. In fact, some companies may even be willing to pay for this in-depth data! In a time where data is everything, you’ll be able to gather precious information. Companies can use this information to gauge their marketing and sales efforts and hosts can use it to plan better events next time.
In conclusion, you should get on the hybrid event trend to become an early entrant in the upcoming shift in the event industry. vFairs can help you get started with this, and create a hybrid event that will reap you numerous benefits.
