Freeman released its new Trends Report Tuesday, a deep dive into the pre-event sentiments, trends and behaviors of event attendees and exhibitors. Among the event management company’s some 80 pages of insights, one of the industry's biggest shifts is addressed: Attendees are waiting longer and longer to commit to being there.
"Basically, there's no such thing as late registration," Ken Holsinger, Freeman executive vice president of industry research and insights, said in an interview from IMEX America. "We are several years now from the 2019 data everyone is trying to compare to.... We can just call it 'registration' now.
"And that timing causes a lot of problems for us," he continued. "That's causing problems in room blocks, that's causing problems in F&B, it causes problems for the whole ecosystem. But instead of late registration, let's look at it as late decision-making. We want to look at why are they registering when they register, and what we can do to accelerate that and incentivize them to do so sooner."
Holsinger shares ideas about how show organizers can change their perspectives and expectations, and offers suggestions for getting attendees to commit sooner. Watch our interview below about Freeman's newly released Trends Report.