The Management of Conferences and Business Events in Periods of Crisis. The New Digital Paradigm

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 affected people mobility worldwide. As a result, both international and domestic tourists almost completely cancelled their bookings, airlines cancelled most of their flights, almost all in-person meetings and events were suspended and PCO’s faced vast economic losses, as their turnover was reduced by over 75% for 2020, with the visitors/attendees decreased by over 90%. The aim of this paper was to investigate the extent to which new technologies were used in organizing and conducting digital events during the pandemic period and their overall impact on the congress market. For this we conducted both a primary and a secondary research; primary data were collected by interviewing the administrative personnel of Hotels, PCO’s, DMC’s, and Audiovisual companies and secondary data were obtained by reviewing journals, historical records, relevant studies conducted by tourism associations and also UNWTO statistics. Our results confirmed that there was a transition of MICE tourism to a new digital environment, in terms of organization of meetings and events and the use of technology throughout their operation. We believe that our study will provide evidence that technology has an important role in conference organization and management in the post-COVID-19 era.