AI Is Changing Business Events, but Perhaps Not in the Way We Expected

Artificial intelligence had its own place on the programme of the CityDNA Summer School in Dijon, particularly during Jonathan Easton’s session on the technology and AI revolution. What interested me more, however, was how often AI appeared elsewhere during the week. It came into discussions about bidding, corporate clients, destination discovery, sustainability, data, PCOs and the future role of convention bureaux. That probably says more about where we are with AI than any individual presentation could. AI is gradually becoming part of the normal operating environment of the business-events industry.

We are moving beyond individual AI use

Most destination organisations have already experimented with generative AI. Employees use it for writing, summarising documents, translating, researching, developing ideas and preparing presentations. These applications can save considerable time, although they rarely change the organisation itself. The more interesting development is what happens when we begin looking at complete processes and considering where AI could support the movement from information to analysis and eventually to action.

The examples discussed during the week showed that this is already happening. AI is being used or explored for RFP (request for proposal) analysis, first drafts of bids, market research, operational checks, conference transcription and knowledge capture, programme personalisation, analysis of registration and event data, sustainability analysis, impact planning and internal decision support. The important development is therefore the gradual movement from individual productivity towards organisational capability.

The RFP process is a good example. A convention bureau can spend considerable time reading requirements, researching an association, checking destination capacity, examining previous events, identifying local expertise and deciding whether an opportunity is worth pursuing. AI can already support many of these stages. When this is combined with a proper bid/no-bid process, it becomes possible to evaluate opportunities against strategic priorities, local intellectual capital, available ambassadors, accessibility, capacity and potential impact. The decision remains with people, but the information needed to make that decision can be assembled much faster.

AI will influence how destinations are discovered

One of the most important questions for me concerns what happens before a convention bureau even receives an enquiry. Meeting planners can increasingly ask an AI system where they should organise their next congress or corporate meeting. The system can compare destinations, identify venues, examine connectivity and suggest locations that appear suitable for the event.

This creates a new dimension of destination visibility. We have spent years thinking about websites, search-engine optimisation, trade shows, sales calls and industry databases. We now also need to consider whether AI systems understand our destinations well enough to recommend them. Accurate information about venues, hotel capacity, accessibility, connectivity, sustainability, universities, research institutes, companies, industry clusters and previous events becomes increasingly important. The quality and structure of destination data may therefore become part of destination competitiveness.

This also has implications for the traditional information role of convention bureaus. During the corporate client discussions, the point was made that if someone simply needs a list of hotels, they can already ask ChatGPT. That does not remove the need for a convention bureau. It changes where our professional value sits. A good bureau understands which hotel actually works for a particular group, what limitations a venue may have, which local organisations should be involved, who can be trusted and what is realistically possible within the destination.

As access to information becomes easier, judgement and contextual knowledge become more important. Much of the knowledge that makes a convention bureau valuable has never existed in a brochure or database. It comes from relationships, experience and understanding how the destination actually works.

AI may change the economics of bidding

Another interesting issue discussed during the week was the appearance of enquiries that seem to have been generated by AI and distributed to several destinations. This could become a much bigger issue than it currently appears. Generative AI makes producing a convincing RFP considerably easier, which means the cost and effort involved in creating an enquiry are falling rapidly.

Convention bureaus may consequently receive more opportunities while spending increasing amounts of time determining which of them are genuine and worth pursuing. AI-assisted lead qualification is an obvious response. A bureau could use AI to identify generic or duplicated requests, compare an opportunity with previous enquiries, assess strategic fit and determine how much human effort should be invested in responding.

We could soon reach a situation where AI helps an organiser prepare an RFP, another AI helps a destination decide whether to pursue it, and another supports the preparation of the response. This development makes it increasingly important to define where human involvement creates the most value.

Our destination knowledge needs to improve

The discussion in Dijon also reinforced something I have increasingly encountered in my own work with AI. The quality of AI output depends heavily on the quality of the information available to it. Destination organisations hold enormous amounts of knowledge, but that knowledge is often fragmented. Some sits in CRM systems, some on websites, some in spreadsheets and presentations, and a considerable amount remains inside the heads of individual employees.

This becomes a practical limitation when we start building more advanced AI-supported processes. Reliable AI requires reliable organisational knowledge. If information about venues, capacities, accessibility, partners, previous bids or local expertise is outdated or inconsistent, AI simply makes those weaknesses visible more quickly.

For convention bureaus knowledge management may therefore become one of the less glamorous but more important parts of AI readiness. Before investing in sophisticated systems, we need to understand what information we have, where it is stored, who maintains it and whether it can actually be trusted.

The human part of the industry becomes more important

The Summer School spent considerable time discussing relationships, trust, negotiation, partnerships and local knowledge. These themes are highly relevant to the AI discussion because they help define the work where people continue to create particular value.

Winning and delivering an international congress requires cooperation between many actors. An association, a local ambassador, a university, companies, venues, hotels, PCOs, DMCs, municipal organisations and community stakeholders may all become part of the same process. Bringing these interests together requires judgement, relationships and an understanding of the local context.

AI can help identify potential local partners and analyse information about them. The relationship that persuades a professor to become a congress ambassador still has to be built. AI can suggest possible legacy activities, while local organisations and people have to commit themselves to making those activities happen. It can support preparation for a negotiation, but responsibility for the relationship and the decisions remains human.

For me, this provides a useful direction for AI adoption in convention bureaus. Administrative and information-intensive work consumes a substantial amount of professional time. If AI can reduce that workload, the released capacity can be used for client relationships, stakeholder engagement, strategic thinking and destination development.

AI readiness is a management issue

There is already a noticeable gap between individual experimentation and organisational readiness. Employees may be using several AI applications while their organisation has yet to establish what tools are approved, what information can be entered into them, how outputs should be reviewed or how data protection and GDPR requirements should be handled.

This makes AI a management issue as much as a technological one. Leadership needs to establish why the organisation is using AI, where it creates value, what employees are expected to learn and where the boundaries are. Boards also need sufficient understanding to participate in these decisions. The discussions in Dijon highlighted leadership commitment, staff training, data classification, responsible-use guidance, approved tools, procurement criteria and measurable use cases as important elements of organisational readiness.

There is also a workforce question that deserves much more attention. When automation saves several hours of work each week, management needs to decide how that capacity should be used. It could allow employees to spend more time with clients, develop new business, improve stakeholder relationships, conduct deeper analysis or reduce workloads. It could also eventually influence staffing structures. These decisions should be part of the AI discussion from the beginning because automation is never completely neutral from an organisational perspective.

Responsible AI is still developing

The enthusiasm around AI also needs to be accompanied by proper governance. Questions around privacy, data residency, GDPR, EU AI regulation, reliability, bias and transparency remain relevant. The environmental footprint of AI also deserves attention in an industry that is increasingly expected to demonstrate its own sustainability performance.

The discussions in Dijon did not provide final answers to these questions, and I would not have expected them to. The technology is developing quickly and regulation and organisational practices are developing alongside it. The important issue is that experimentation and governance need to progress together. Destination organisations need enough freedom to learn what AI can do while maintaining clear human responsibility for how it is used.

What would an AI-ready convention bureau look like?

After the discussions in Dijon, I think AI readiness has surprisingly little to do with how many AI tools an organisation uses. An organisation can have access to every major platform and still have very little idea how AI should contribute to its work. A convention bureau that understands its strategy, has reliable destination knowledge, develops staff competence, establishes reasonable governance and gradually integrates useful applications into its processes is in a much stronger position.

This connects directly with the broader discussion we had throughout the Summer School about the future role of convention bureaus. The industry is moving towards a model where bureaus select events more strategically, understand what organisers are trying to achieve, connect them with the destination ecosystem and help create outcomes that continue beyond the event itself. That requires more research, stronger relationships, better data and considerably more strategic thinking.

AI can create some of the capacity needed to do this. It can help us process information faster, identify connections that would otherwise take time to find, improve our organisational memory and remove repetitive work from people whose expertise could be used elsewhere.

For me, that is one of the more interesting conclusions from Dijon. The future of AI in business events is connected to the future of the people working in the industry. If we use the technology well, we should have more capacity for the work that makes convention bureaus valuable in the first place: understanding our destinations, building relationships, connecting people, making informed decisions and helping the right meetings create something meaningful in the places where they happen.

If you want to understand your place in AI world, visit www.destinationready.ai for some inspiration and join the community pilot!