Resources for Event Leaders
We work with leading organisers to uncover where the industry is heading and share insights you can use to stay ahead. From AI-powered concierges to new revenue models, our research dives into what’s really working and what comes next for tradeshows.
Research and resources
3 ways to treat all your event visitors like VIPs
For years, the VIP experience at events has been reserved for a fairly small group of people. These are the hosted buyers, the attendees with carefully curated schedules, and the people who receive that extra layer of support before they even arrive onsite.
When those programmes are done well, they are incredibly effective. Buyers feel looked after, exhibitors value the quality of the meetings, and organisers can clearly see the commercial return.
The problem, of course, is that this kind of experience has traditionally been difficult to scale.
It depends on
- a lot of time
- a lot of headaches (for everyone – from intern to CEO)
- and often a lot of manual work
So while a small group of attendees might get a highly guided, high-value journey, everyone else is often left to work things out for themselves.
That standard experience will be familiar to most of us. Visitors are given a link to an exhibitor directory with spotty information, a multi-track conference agenda, and several emails to download an app they may or may not ever use properly.
They are expected to navigate multiple halls or tracks, decide who is relevant, and make the most of their day with relatively little guidance.
For a long time, that gap between the VIP experience and the standard attendee experience has felt inevitable. I am not sure it is anymore.
AI is starting to change the economics of personalisation. Not perfectly, and not to the point where every visitor suddenly gets a white-glove hosted buyer journey, but enough to create a meaningful middle ground. Enough to make it possible for more attendees to feel guided, supported, and like the event was designed with them in mind.
Here are three ways I think organisers can start moving in that direction:
1) Upgrade from AI assistant to AI concierge
A lot of event teams begin their AI journey with an assistant. That usually means a chatbot or plug-in that can answer practical questions such as where registration is, when the keynote starts, or which hall someone needs to go to. There is nothing wrong with that. It is useful, and in some cases it can save operational teams a lot of time.
But it does not really transform the attendee experience, and the only metrics it will really give you are:
- Total number of questions asked by your visitors
- Average number of questions asked by each visitor
- Popular questions asked e.g. “Where is the networking after-party?”
A concierge does something more valuable. It gets to know your visitors (using reg data and asking more questions about their goals and profile). And it helps visitors decide what to do at the show, by
- recommending which exhibitors are worth prioritising
- pointing attendees towards sessions that are likely to be relevant, and, at its best
- arranging the kinds of meetings that make the event feel worthwhile.
That is a very different proposition, because it starts to influence outcomes rather than simply providing information.
This distinction matters more than it might first appear.
The reason VIP programmes feel valuable is not that someone is available to answer questions. It is that someone is helping attendees make the most of their time. That is what people are really paying for.
AI cannot fully replace the human judgement and relationship-building that sit behind the very best hosted buyer experiences, but it can bring some of that same logic to a much wider group of visitors.
2) Stop pushing app downloads weeks before your event
If we are serious about giving more visitors a better experience, then we also need to be honest about visitor behaviour and stop planning for the “ideal visitor” instead of the real one.
As much as organisers want attendees to download the app as soon as they register, most people simply do not behave that way. The vast majority will only download it the night before, on the train in, or once they are already at the venue and trying to work out where to go.
That is why web-based tools are so interesting. Clicking a link that opens in a browser, and immediately getting something useful, feels very different from being asked to download something before you have seen any benefit. It is faster, lighter, and much closer to the kind of experience people now expect in every other part of their digital lives.
One of the reasons VIP experiences feel premium is that they tend to be simpler. The attendee is not being asked to jump through hoops. They are given something useful quickly, often with very little effort on their part. That simplicity is part of what makes the experience feel thoughtful.
I think this is a useful test for any new event technology: how quickly can someone get value from it?
If a visitor can click a link and immediately get something genuinely useful, such as
- relevant exhibitor recommendations
- a tailored plan for their day, or
- an easy way to request a meeting
that feels much more premium than being asked to do admin before they see any benefit.
3) Don’t let exhibitors spam them for meetings
Another part of the attendee experience that often gets overlooked is how exposed visitors are to unwanted outreach. One of the quickest ways to make someone feel like a lead rather than a guest is to let them get flooded with irrelevant meeting requests. From the exhibitor side, we frame it as an opportunity. From the attendee side, it often just feels noisy.
That kind of noise is the opposite of what makes a VIP experience work. The best high-touch programmes are not built around volume. They are built around relevance, timing, and intent. The attendee feels like they are in control, and the meetings they take feel useful rather than forced.
This is one of the reasons I find buyer-initiated models so compelling. When a visitor actively requests time with an exhibitor, especially when they can share some context on what they are looking for, the dynamic changes completely. The conversation starts from genuine interest. That is usually a better experience for the attendee, but it is often better for the exhibitor too, because a smaller number of high-intent conversations tends to be worth far more than a long list of ignored requests.
If organisers want to create a more premium experience at scale, protecting attendees from low-value spam is a surprisingly important part of that.
None of this means every attendee should be treated exactly like a hosted buyer. Your highest-value relationships will still benefit from human attention, careful curation, and a much more bespoke service. But that does not mean the rest of your audience has to be left with a confusing, self-service experience.
The real opportunity is to raise the baseline. Instead of expecting visitors to figure everything out alone, we can start giving many more of them a sense of direction. We can make it easier for them to meet the right people, find the right suppliers, and use their time more well.
That shift may sound modest, but I think it is quite significant. When more attendees leave an event feeling that it was relevant, well-guided, and worth their time, it changes the value of the event for everyone involved. It improves the visitor experience, strengthens exhibitor outcomes, and gives organisers a stronger story about commercial impact.
The VIP experience used to be scarce by necessity. AI is changing that.
This is exactly the kind of experience we built Ezna for.
Ezna is a web-based AI event concierge that helps visitors discover the right exhibitors, find the most relevant sessions, and request meetings with real intent – without needing to download another app or wade through a flood of supplier outreach.
In other words, it helps you give more attendees a more guided, more premium experience at scale, while also driving better-quality meetings for exhibitors.
If you’d like to see what that looks like in practice, book a short demo here.