Since March 2020, just like everyone in the industry, Kuoni Congress was challenged to move all meetings to an online environment. Without hesitation, they placed their trust in their long-term partner Centium and their online platform OnAir, to deliver all our virtual and hybrid events.
Even though there was a very short period of time to adapt to the situation and get to grips with the new technological tools, learning happened quickly, and we were able to perform our first virtual event at the end of June, EAS2020, with 2000 attendees and 900 speakers.
Looking back now it is incredible to think about the colossal task undertaken, with everyone on this newly created online platform, for 170 sessions over five days!
Some of the features included: the possibility to have parallel sessions taking place at the same time, where every delegate could easily jump from one session to another, a meeting hub where attendees could interact with each other, and a virtual exhibition.
Needless to say, it was a huge effort for all of the Kuoni team involved, but hard work pays off, and EAS2020 was recently awarded ‘Virtual Event of the Year’.
Since this initial virtual event in June, Kuoni have been busy holding a variety of virtual projects throughout 2020: from congresses, to conferences, conventions and workshops. Currently preparations continue, for a multitude of virtual and hybrid events in 2021.
“As we move forward, we are keenly aware of the many lessons learned along the way. The most significant being our new-found dependence on technology. It also remains our greatest challenge!
“Along with challenges we also have significant changes, the most noteworthy being those in security and data privacy, which are completely different from those we have used before. We are no longer an on-site congress with the luxury of monitoring on-site and placing complete trust in those suppliers we can see for ourselves. Our world has now changed into one of dependence on internet connections and technology. It is a digital trust now. It is our new reality.
“We know virtual and hybrid events are here to stay for Kuoni, at least for our immediate future.
For that reason, we remain steadfast in our intention to continuously improve and source new tools and services that we can offer our clients, to guarantee even more successful virtual events.”