The State of the Events Industry, May 2026 Update
Takeaways from the IMEX stage in Frankfurt
It’s become a little bit of a tradition that I have the honour to prepare and moderate a “State of the Industry” session at IMEX, and that we assemble a global group of leaders to have a fast-paced discussion.
Imex’s Tahira Endean once again put together an amazing global group: Carina Bauer from IMEX, Kevin Hinton from U.S. Travel, Huey Hong from the Singapore Tourism Board and H.E. Juma Al Kait from the UAE’s government.
And together, we set out to work: Starting with a long list of observations and developments, we clustered them, connected them, condensed them. Different markets, different political systems, different levels of exposure to risk, and different ways of organising the relationship between government, business and events.
The interesting part was how a shared perspective came into view as we discussed. What had started as a broad collection of issues consolidated into three core arcs:
how the industry deals with external shocks;
how leadership and talent are shifting;
and what AI changes once we move past the noise.
Our 45 minutes on stage flew by. Here are my seven central takeaways.
1. Resilience has moved from a feature to our industry’s system design.
We like to talk about resilience. often too easily. We “survived”. We “adapted”. We “came back”. All true. But the more useful point we can only rightfully celebrate resilience after a crisis if we build it before. Otherwise, we have to rely on luck.
That means safety and security protocols, crisis communication, public-private coordination. It also means aviation links, venue operations, supplier readiness and real-time information flows. And it needs understanding that perception now moves faster than reality. A headline can unsettle delegates before the actual situation on the ground has changed. In that environment, communication skills and networks are arguably the most critical type of organisational infrastructure.
2. Our industry is getting its leadership transition, just later than expected.
For years, people talked about a post-pandemic changing of the guard. In many places, it did not really happen in 2022, 2023 or 2024. Senior leaders stayed on to guide the recovery. Now the shift is becoming visible.
This brings opportunity and transition risks. This industry still runs on relationships, memory and judgement. None of that transfers automatically when a title changes hands. Handling this in the right way is a collective responsibility.
3. Non-linear careers are not a weakness. They are part of our industry model.
One of the strongest points in the conversation was that this industry has always attracted people from elsewhere: hospitality, finance, government, journalism, engineering, architecture, even shipyards.
We should stop treating that as an accident. Business events need people who can read a room, build trust, sell intelligently, improvise under pressure and connect people who did not know they needed each other. Those skills travel. Fun fact: On stage we had someone who worked in naval architecture, and one has experience as a wedding photographer.
4. The Gen Z challenge is not just recruitment. It is visibility.
The pandemic interrupted the talent pipeline. For many graduates, the events industry disappeared from view exactly when they were making career choices.
If younger talent does not see business events as modern, international, commercially serious and socially useful, that is on us. We need to explain the industry better - not as logistics, not as hospitality, not as “putting on events,” but as an industry that creates markets, moves knowledge, supports policy goals, builds communities and makes trust operational.
5. AI changes the machinery, not the core.
AI will improve workflows, matchmaking, content handling, customer service, sales support and internal productivity. Some of that will be genuinely useful. Some of it will be mediocre software in a new wrapper.
But the wrong question is whether AI replaces face-to-face events. It does not. The better question is what happens to face-to-face events when the rest of the business environment becomes more synthetic, more automated and less trusted.
As the most recent acquisitions show: Face to face is becoming even more important, even more valuable. Which directly leads to…
6. Trust is becoming the industry’s strongest argument.
In a world of altered video, automated messages and algorithmic noise, being in the same room is not nostalgic. It is a competitive advantage.
Trust is built through presence, context, body language, side conversations and repeated human exposure. That is not a romantic defence of events. It is a business case.
7. Impact measurement is our burden of proof.
The industry has spent years saying that events matter. And they do. But saying it is no longer enough.
Economic impact remains important, but it is too narrow for the conversations destinations and governments are now having. The stronger question is what events leave behind, how they drive destination development: sector development, investment signals, knowledge transfer, talent attraction, policy alignment and community value.
That is harder to prove. It requires better data and less self-congratulation. But it is also where the industry’s future licence to operate will be won. At IMEX, we launched a new “Destination Development Model” that scores and shows the total impact that business events create – click this link if you to know more.