The event known as our industry's Super Bowl wrapped up a highly successful 15th edition yesterday afternoon in Las Vegas. And while it was the biggest-ever IMEX America, calling it that has lost some of its force over the years, given that each edition tends to be bigger than the last. Impressively, this milestone edition drew 17,800 attendees, among them more than 6,000 buyers, 4,800 of them hosted from about 60 different world markets.
It was the event's biggest show floor to date as well, about 5 percent larger than last year. There were about 96,000 prescheduled meetings, 82,000 of which were one-to-one with the remainder being group presentations. And there were about 420 educational sessions, approximately 100 of which were on Smart Monday, before the exhibition opened.
"The strength of this show matters to Las Vegas, matters to our entire industry and, frankly, right now matters to the United States," said Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority CEO Steve Hill at the event's closing press conference in the Mandalay Bay Convention Center. "We're all working through headwinds as it relates to both domestic and international travel, and so we appreciate the commitment that everyone who is here has made in order to come."
The destination likewise demonstrated its gratitude this week to IMEX organizers in recognition of the event's 15th anniversary. When presenting them with a commemorative plaque earlier in the week, Hill thanked the IMEX Group for the $185 million in direct economic impact the show has been responsible for generating since launching in Las Vegas. And that doesn't take into account related revenue associated with the countless ancillary events that have sprung up during IMEX over the past 15 years.
The international nature of IMEX is a significant added benefit, particularly given the well-publicized struggles experienced by the United States in terms of declining international inbound visitation.
While the breakdown of total international attendees isn't yet available, IMEX CEO Carina Bauer shared the makeup of the hosted buyer program. About 70 percent of the hosted buyers were U.S.-based, 5 percent came from Canada and 25 percent traveled from other countries.
"That's a couple of percentage points higher for international buyers vs. last year," said Bauer, "and about what we'd have expected in 2024 and before. We had about a 2 percent drop in international last year."
Building for the future
While we celebrate the success of this year's event, we should likewise be strengthening the industry for the future, advised Stephanie Glanzer, CMP, chief sales officer and senior vice president for MGM Resorts. "We need to talk about the return on investment and the value of bringing people face to face because right now the pace and the optimism are very strong," she said. "We saw that this week by the energy, the RFPs being exchanged and the hard business being talked about. But I ask us all to be one step ahead of that and truly look at the value of the economic impact that we make on the world, the jobs, and the up-and-coming leadership and talent that we have."
A number of initiatives and announcements this week spoke directly to Glanzer's point.
Brian D. Stevens Hospitality Education Fund
In honor of the career of ConferenceDirect founder and chair Brian Stevens, the new fund was launched on Sunday, on the eve of IMEX America, to support student scholarships and industry research. The fund, which is backed by $1 million to start, is in part aimed at encouraging disadvantaged young people to attend industry events and learn about industry-related educational opportunities and careers available to them.
Future Leaders Lab
This collaboration between IMEX and Meeting Professionals International is designed to expand the global talent pool and build upon the current Future Leaders Forum. While this year's IMEX America featured a sizable number of student attendees, the objective is to reach even more by broadening the scope to attract those studying fields such as economics, finance or marketing as well as events, hospitality and tourism.
"We want those Gen Zs and those Gen Alphas to know that they have a chance to work in a field where the end product is a human experience," said Bauer. "That's an amazing opportunity and a powerful X factor for many young people."
IMEX and MPI are currently running 10 future leaders labs in eight countries, and the program is designed so that it can be picked up and run by any organization.
ImpactAIQ
IMEX America is serving as a pilot program for the newly announced ImpactAIQ, an AI-driven platform developed by Meet4Impact in collaboration with the event-technology provider Gevme. The platform presents an innovative opportunity to measure the long-term social and community impact of an event — and IMEX America will serve to demonstrate and pilot how that can be scaled to something the size of our industry's Super Bowl.
"This is our 15th show, but we have not achieved this on our own — very far from it," said Bauer. "We've always had a vision for what we wanted this show to be, for the business that it can generate, and the industry and the partners who have worked with us to take that vision to understand it and to help us deliver on it. That power of partnership is the result of what we see here this week."
IMEX America will be moving to September for the next couple of years, taking place at Mandalay Bay from Sept. 28-30, 2027, and from Sept. 26-28, 2028.
