What Modern Attendees Expect: Data, Design, and the Future of Events

[00:00:00] Ken Holsinger: I think as they look towards 2026,

really focusing on that audience,

understanding who's coming and why, but more importantly,

who's not coming anymore and why not? And really learn from that because they're going to have to make a lot of fast, net new, risk-based decisions to reach a new audience.

[00:00:17] Alyssa Peltier: Great events create great brands, but pulling off an event that engages, excites, and connects audiences?

Well, that takes a village. And we're that village. My name is Alyssa.

[00:00:29] Rachel Andrews: I'm Rachel.

[00:00:30] Camille Arnold: I'm Camille.

[00:00:31] Felicia Asiedu: And I'm Felicia.

[00:00:33] Alyssa Peltier: And you are listening to Great Events,

the podcast for all event enthusiasts, creators,

and innovators in the world of events and marketing.

[00:00:42] Rachel Andrews: All right. What is up in the wide, wide world of events? My name is Rachel and you are listening to the Great Events Podcast. Today we are talking about shocking of all shockers, industry events, and not ignoring some of the big truths that the industry needs to face. Surviving is not the same as growing. We are talking about Freeman's new end of year report that's showing 2025's exposures, what that means for 2026 and beyond, how our organization's supposed to be shifting. All of that fun stuff. We are digging in. I'm joined by expert, Ken Holsinger from the Freeman Company. He has a big, very impressive title of SVP of Industry Research and Insights. Welcome, Ken, to the Great Events Podcast.

[00:01:25] Ken Holsinger: Oh, thanks, Rachel. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

[00:01:28] Rachel Andrews: We are pumped to have you. I know you talk about a lot of things in the industry all the time, so thanks for taking the time. Why don't you give our podcast guests just the 30-second, why you're the greatest, who you are, what you do for the industry, why you love the industry? Feel free to jump in some fun facts, whatever you want.

[00:01:46] Ken Holsinger: Yeah. I always feel old when I say this, but I have been in the space now for about 30 years from starting off in the AEV side of the industry and actually moving into the event tech side. I built a tech company that I sold to Freeman 10 years ago. And you know what? This is my best phase. I love what I'm doing, which is taking what we've learned, but more importantly, learning from others. So I lead a team that works on industry research. We've actually talked to over seven million attendees and about half a million exhibitors and regularly about 75,000 of the organizers and planners that are the listeners to this. So my job is to interpret the data and provide the insights and communicate with the industry.

[00:02:27] Rachel Andrews: Well, tell me a little bit about what industry research and insights means because I think most people are familiar with Freeman. Obviously, you guys are a huge company, but you're producing a lot of great data for people like me or people that are event marketers, exhibitors to pay attention to. So what should we be paying attention to as far as what you're producing right now?

[00:02:47] Ken Holsinger: We could talk all day about there's a lot of research reports and things that are happening out in the space. What really drove us is we've been doing industry research and various things, but during the pandemic, we needed a point of view, not only for us and our customers, but more broadly for the industry. It was clear that we weren't navigating very well early on. And so we turned to the attendee, and that really has become the north star of what we're doing. Very few research groups are able to talk to not just attendees, but the volume of attendees that we do. So our job is to say, what is the attendee looking for? Because that will make the exhibitor, the sponsor happy. That will make the business unit happy if their participants are a part of that, their customers, the voice.

So our job is to go out and listen to them and then calibrate. So as we look at what attendees actually want, it gives us a tremendous amount of insight. And that's been very well received across the industry. And interestingly, even when we step on toes,

when we say the attendees are telling us, for instance, that they're not having quite the memorable moments at our events that our organizers and planners think they are. That's by double, by the way. The organizers and planners think that 80% of their attendees are having amazing, memorable, marked moments and only 40% of attendees actually say they are. Those are the kinds of things that allow us to provide context, provide a little bit deeper poke at the industry sometimes, but honestly, it gives us direction of where we need to go, where we need to correct. And I think our access to a much broader pool of attendees has given us that kind of unique point of view to calibrate what everyone in the ecosystem's looking for.

[00:04:32] Rachel Andrews: Yeah. I think the hard part there is there's the internal expectations of greatness that our stakeholders want. This is just my perspective, but the internal expectations don't necessarily translate to attendee expectations. So the internal might be one thing and what attendees or your employees or your clients want is actually not equal, which I think stewards of that experience, me, planners, marketers, people that are producing shows, they need to just translate that back to the organization because you do still need to provide value to your organization at the same time. I think that's the hard challenge for us.

[00:05:11] Ken Holsinger: Let me give you two quick examples. We've calibrated this multiple times. Everybody in the industry has had the experience of bringing in a celebrity to speak at their event. Our research shows that less than 1% of attendees want to listen to a celebrity at an event, yet it's a major investment. Does that mean that they won't come if they're there? Not necessarily, but often the CEO or the planner, it'd be really cool to have Tom Cruise come to the event or insert the celebrity here. The attendees are saying, "I want to talk to people that are going to help me solve my business challenges, industry experts." Obama was at an event I was at and he was famous for saying software as a service. He said, "I'm supposed to be here to talk about SaaS. I think you got the wrong Obama. That's Michelle." And he was joking on how disconnected he actually is from that topic.

The other one was wellness. Our industry couldn't talk enough about wellness the last few years, particularly post-pandemic. Less than 3% of attendees said that they cared about wellness at their events. Doesn't mean we shouldn't do it.

But let me be clear on both of these, that's not what's getting them on an airplane. So translating those things of what attendees want to our internal stakeholders. The internal stakeholder says, "Well, I don't care. I really want to have a celebrity." Or, "We need to make sure that we're promoting wellness." Just as two examples, but I think we can't confuse that with what actually will drive them, get them to the event, and we have to balance those things and figure out what winning looks like in both cases.

[00:06:39] Rachel Andrews: Yeah. All right. Well, let's dive into some of these end of year trends recap. What is this "2030 is closer than you think" kind of terrifying sentiment?

[00:06:51] Ken Holsinger: Yeah. One of the things that we do is track obviously the balance of what's happening in the workforce with the different generations and what is happening within the events industry and how those things balance out. We point out that everyone understands more clearly now that Millennials and Gen Z are the largest component of the workforce. They have been now since early 2024 when Gen Z overtook boomers in the workforce. We also understand that Gen X, my generation has little to no major influence. Nobody's going out and being like, "The New York Times said about Gen X."

[00:07:25] Rachel Andrews: You matter. You matter.

[00:07:27] Ken Holsinger: I know we matter. We're tough, but we're the smallest generation. There's not this shift. So this big conversation about 2030 is over the next few years, we started in 2025, said, "What's the five-year outlook? Less than 5% of boomers will be left in the workforce. We will see 75% of the workforce being made up of Millennials and Gen Z

and a mere 20-ish percent of Gen X.

So what do we do about that?"

Well, first, we better understand that the events we've been designing for the last 40 years are for an audience that is all but disappearing. All of Boomers, 100% of that generation will be at or above retirement age by 2030. So while some may stick around, that's not where we should be driving the events. And so when we talk about the impetus for change or empowering a planner for change, this 2030 is closer than you think.

We're only a couple of event cycles. Most of these events are looking at annualized planning with year over year. There's two or three events away from the majority of their audience being retired and recognizing that many of the influencers that they think of as the youngsters are actually quite a bit older than they think. And this is where I poke at Millennials and remind them that they're now officially middle-aged. So the conversation has to be balanced here. And that's my job as Gen X.

Our job is to translate and poke at both generations. So it's coming quickly, they want different things, and most of our events aren't calibrated to understand that.

[00:08:56] Rachel Andrews: Yeah. I guess surviving does not equal growing in that sentiment, right? 

[00:09:00] Ken Holsinger: No, and our big theme this year is that retirement is outpacing retention. Retention across the events industry is probably the biggest story we uncovered last year. And it's a story that we should have been aware of. And I'm pointing at myself as well. Most people don't realize until they quietly whisper to each other that the events industry, first time retention is only about 30%. 70% of attendees don't come back to individual events. We broadened it out and said, "Well, if that's the case, what's loyalty look like across the board? When they do come back, how much do they come back?"

We go out to a three-year rotation. We looked at 20 years of data. Are people coming back? It gets into the low 30s. We get to 34% of retention. And then if we go all the way out to, well, same company, same headcount.

Freeman is sending five people to an event and we're going to send five next year. We get barely to 40%. It's like 39%. So that retention piece is shocking enough. But that 20-30% retirement cliff that's coming, that is the most loyal of our attendees. They are the ones that have been the most repeat. And as they leave the cycle and we aren't bringing in net new attendees into the cycle and we're not focusing on customer acquisition costs or CAC and LTV of these new lifetime value of these new attendees as they come in, we're going to have some troubles. And so shifting and understanding that really our number one thing on our dashboard, I believe these next few years, if not forever, should be retention. And yet we couldn't find any major industry events, corporate events, or otherwise that were focused where KPI of retention was high on their radar, if at all.

[00:10:49] Rachel Andrews: Right. And well, I think that points back to your expectations gap that you had on before, because if you're not planning for it,

because I see this maybe being a big problem for associations with the retirement and stuff,

and associations are booked five to eight years out,

maybe more, depending on your association. Booking your citywide, for example,

they're probably not thinking about this.

And that they should be because they need to be focused on, is this content going to hit the mark? We're going to have a membership problem. It's going to snowball for people.

[00:11:19] Ken Holsinger: The membership conversation comes into play. I'll have associations on a weekly basis come to me and they'll do two things. They'll say, "Do you have any data that shows me why the next generation doesn't like in person events?"

And I say, "Time out. No, I don't. But it's clear that perhaps your event is having an issue, but actually the next generation actually trusts the events in person more than any other."

Gen Z is looking to validate what they're seeing online. They need more validation in real time, in real person, in real life. And so that is the first thing. The second one is they'll say, "Well, they're not loyal. They don't like membership."

And I say, "Well, first of all, when I ask boomers to jump, they say how high?" I do this with large audiences. Everybody's heard that. Then I flip and I say to Millennials and Gen Z, "I want you to jump." What do you think they say, Rachel? I'll put you on the spot. If I ask a Millennial or Gen Z, "I want you to jump," what do they say?

[00:12:12] Rachel Andrews: How much time is this going to take?

[00:12:15] Ken Holsinger: They say "Why?" which is effectively the same thing. The whole room yells "Why?"

And that conversation around membership, around loyalty, around retention is really intrinsic to this because the conversation about returning to events or that longtime planning around membership is really boomers were taught and we as X-ers followed along, that loyalty to a company or to an organization was directional towards the company or that organization. Loyalty to a Gen Z or Millennial is,

"Is that organization loyal to me?

Do they understand my needs et cetera?" And this becomes a contentious piece between groups. And I say to boomers often, I'll just call it out, "You raised them." So they are asking the why question, which is an important question, and we have to be prepared to answer it. It may not be that they aren't wanting to belong. It may be that they don't want to belong to you.

And you better figure out why that the average age of event attendees has dropped well over a decade. Prior to the pandemic, the average age across all event types we study, corporate, association, for profits, was 53 years old, heavily weighted towards a very much boomer audience. That has dropped. The average age is now between 41 and 42 years old. Guess what hasn't shifted? The average age of the planner and organizer has not shifted down. They're hanging out. It's not that we're pushing them out to retirement, but that disconnect may be bigger than they recognize. And that long-term planning cycle of booking a venue five, seven, eight years out is coming back and saying, "Okay, the pace of change is faster.

What the next audiences are looking for might be different."

We can also look at what they have in common, their core business objectives around learning and networking and commercial aspects, et cetera.

We have a lot in common there, but I had an event literally, I'm at an event in Miami where they're debating their planning and they're talking about why this XYZ band, which I will not name, wasn't as successful as they thought. And one of the Millennials raised their hand and said, "Can you tell me who that band is again?" And I just laughed from the front of the room. I'm like, "You picked a band that was cool in 1968. You can't figure out why this generation didn't hang out with you after hours. You gave them no reason to. You didn't listen to them. You didn't ask them, and none of them were in this room to help plan the next one, so we better figure out something different."

[00:14:46] Rachel Andrews: It's like the Spider-Man meme where they're all pointing at each other like, "You didn't come to our event." Exactly. And they're like, "Well, you didn't give me anything I cared about."

And so I think that people are going to need to take a hard look in the mirror at what their attendees or clients are going to value. But I do think, just not to be a Debbie Downer on this call, I do think we are at a precipice of it being really great because people, like you said, especially Gen Z, are going to look at online things and be like, "I don't know if this is fake or real. I'm going to go in person to see if it's fake or real." But I think organizers have to get on board with, we need to change all of this to match what these people want versus the people that are going to be retired in five years.

[00:15:32] Ken Holsinger: So you used a metaphor, and I'll call out, and I'm not poking at you, but I think you'll appreciate this. You said we got to look in the mirror, et cetera. And actually one of the things we put into this report was-

[00:15:42] Rachel Andrews: Don't look in the mirror. Look in someone else's mirror.

[00:15:44] Ken Holsinger: Don't look in the mirror. Look out the window at your audience, figure out what's going on. That reflection, they're designing events for them. They're primarily extroverts, yet almost 70% of the population today and the younger they are, the more introverted they are. So you're designing for a party that they don't want to come to. You're designing for a noise volume or an excitement that might be good for you, but not for them as much. And so really understanding that. And I think what you said hits it on the head. The next generation, they want to be at in person events. The value chain has shifted though. Their core objectives are, they're very clear and very strong that when the attendees are asked, "Did you have a peak moment? Or don't you?" They said, "If I do have a peak moment, I'll come back, but my peak moments are tied to my business objectives."

The return on time is incredibly important. When they come to the event, they want well-invested time, but they don't necessarily... Their number one complaint is over programming. Booking my time from 7:00 AM until 10:00 PM is not my idea they're telling us of a great time. But the opportunity of the trust in the channel much higher than ever, and most importantly, and I think marketers need to understand this. First of all, the CMO is in charge of the budget here, of the exhibits, the sponsorship, as well as a lot of attendance, and a lot of planners are used to it. Prior to the pandemic, it was sales and revenue that were in charge of that. That shifted during the pandemic because of the digital channel being the only channel available. What has that shifted? It shifted the buying cycle that the buyer that's coming into the environment, whether it's to learn something or go to a trade show or whatever it might be, that buyer is coming in more educated.

You can't give them the surface level stuff you might have before. The best example I give of that, I was at a major tech conference, I won't say where or what the name was, but a major corporate conference. My company sent me there to attend to learn about AI for our company. We are going to invest millions of dollars into these platforms. I wanted to understand what are the differences. And myself and colleagues who happen to be a Millennial and a Gen Z are walking around the show floor and we go up to these booths and they immediately, they want to swipe the badge and then they want to give us the socks and hot sauce giveaway. And we'll say, "Can you tell us what's different about your company? What is it?" These are all AI platforms, et cetera. And they would come back and say, "Well, you know what? We can set you up with a meeting after the event."

I'm like, "Time out. First of all, Jim, you're giving me this feedback. They're brand new to the industry. How long have you been in the industry?" "Oh, this is my first show." "Why are you here? I do not want to talk to you." The planner of that booth was like, "You know what? It'll give Jim great experience with our industry. We'll send them to the trade show." We're like, "You know what will tick me off at a booth, Jim, because-"

[00:18:36] Rachel Andrews: People that don't know what they're talking about.

[00:18:37] Ken Holsinger: They don't know what they're talking about. And then more importantly, they have basically treated their booths like a physical version of their website, which is absolutely the wrong way to do it. Swipe a badge, contact form, set up a follow-up. That's what we do on websites. Oh, by the way, you want to scan our QR code and you can get a brochure. That's what your website is for. In person is subject matter experts, engagement, differentiation, validation, hands-on. Those are the things they're strongly telling us.

[00:19:06] Rachel Andrews: Is that what you're calling the X factor of the event? Figuring out what each attendee type wants and delivering that to them?

[00:19:13] Ken Holsinger: Yeah, to a certain extent. So effectively, the excellence framework says, why do you come to an event? Learn, network, have fun, do business, experience, learning, networking, and commerce. The core objectives are learning networking and commerce. The X factor applies the experiential side to it, whether it's having fun, tied to an objective, whatever. It says the way they experience learning is what they come back with, the way they experience networking. And that's the X factor. We take the X, move it up over their primary objective, and they tell us, "I'm here to learn. I'm here to connect." And their top two objectives, learning and networking or networking and commerce, which by the way, almost the full majority by a long shot, something, one or two is the end. The networking is rising. That's what they can't do as well online. They can learn about product and they can get certified online, but what they can't do is the meaningful connections face-to-face that our industry brings and that they value so much.

So, make sure that we understand through the lens of the experience that networking is core to the learning and the commercial experience and how those things play out with their audience.

[00:20:22] Rachel Andrews: So if I'm an organizer listening to this right now, which I am, but I'm also the host, what would you tell somebody? Forget your normal, because a lot of us are just in execution mode constantly. And sometimes we don't have time to take a step back and say, "Is this working? What do we do different?" Some people don't even have that luxury, but if they need to prep for 26 and beyond, let's say even 2030, what can they start doing now to help themselves in the future? Spend a couple extra minutes doing X so that your programs benefit in the future and you're not just doing things to do them, you're really understanding your core audience and objectives.

[00:21:03] Ken Holsinger: Yeah. Let me give you three things. The first thing is, I've already mentioned and I won't belabor it, they better focus on retention. They better understand what's bringing people back. And the reason I say that this is what they should focus on for the future goes to the second thing, which is when they focus on retention, they're going to learn that the people that they've been surveying and getting feedback from about their audience, because the third thing is knowing their audience. The middle one is the people they're asking are the wrong people. What we have learned in looking at almost 20 years of data is that the people that fill out your net promoter score or your post-event survey, they're not the ones that aren't coming back. They're the ones that do come back. And in fact, the longer they're at your event, the more critical they become.

The more loyal they are, the lower their net promoter score. You better figure out who's not coming back, listen to them and why they haven't come back. Or in your attendee acquisition efforts, why aren't they coming? Because planners are spending too much time focused on the royal we of the people inside the building already and saying, "What do you want? What do you like?" And I'm not saying that those people don't matter, but remember, they're only 30%. There's 70% of an audience that's not answering your surveys, that doesn't want to come back to your event or never wants to come to your event in the first place, and really getting outside of ourselves and saying, "You know what? When we do broader consumer-based marketing, we're trying to focus on the total addressable market of opportunity. We want to get outside of who our existing customer is. We want to focus on retaining our existing customer and growing net new."

I think as they look towards 2026, really focusing on that audience, understanding who's coming and why, but more importantly, who's not coming anymore and why not? And really learn from that because they're going to have to make a lot of fast, net new, risk-based decisions to reach a new audience. Their current audience is leaving and they better be ready to address what the demands and desires are of the audience that's up and coming.

[00:23:03] Rachel Andrews: Yeah. Well, that's great. Ken, I know we're at time here for our podcast, so I want to thank you for sharing some of this data. We're going to link to this because there's a lot of great stuff, a lot of great nuggets in your end of year report that we didn't get to. Just we didn't even talk about hands-on experiences or subject matter experts and how important that is. And I think that there's so many good nuggets that organizers can take that aren't really that hard to implement, by the way. I think that there are things that are very easy shifts that we can make to incorporate the next gen. So I agree with you, retention is kind of where events are going to win or die. It's like kill or be killed at this point when you think about the next five years. Well, I appreciate it. Thanks for sharing the data. Where can our listeners find you? Any other kind of nuggets or reports that we need to look out for?

[00:23:50] Ken Holsinger: You can look me up on LinkedIn just @kenholsinger. I'd love to talk with you there. We talk a lot about research, and sneakers, and food. So let's talk about all those things. They can go on to the Freeman site at freeman.com and they can get the research. And I know you said you're going to link it. The best thing about this end of year one is just like the CliffsNotes. It's like normally our reports are long and deep and lots of data. This is 15, 16 pages, really good nuggets that you can bring back. And it's designed to take back to your organization and help them make the case for change within their event. They're not always the ones that aren't allowing the change. Often it's their stakeholders. And so we designed the report to use as a resource for that.

[00:24:32] Rachel Andrews: Right. Well, we thank you. This is something we all need. It's really helpful to have that, especially the quick nuggets, the great stats. So thank you again for joining. To our listeners, thanks for joining us again. And Ken, thanks again to you and to Freeman.

[00:24:45] Ken Holsinger: Appreciate it.

[00:24:49] Alyssa Peltier: Thanks for hanging out with us on Great Events, a podcast by Cvent. If you've been enjoying our podcast, make sure to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode.

[00:24:59] Rachel Andrews: And you can help fellow event professionals and marketers just like you discover Great Events by leaving us a rating on Apple, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform.

[00:25:08] Felicia Asiedu: Stay connected with us on social media for behind-the-scenes content, updates, and some extra doses of inspiration.

[00:25:16] Rachel Andrews: Got a great story or an event to share? We want to hear from you. Find us on LinkedIn, send us a DM, or drop us a note at greatevents@cvent.com.

[00:25:26] Felicia Asiedu: Big thanks to our amazing listeners, our guest speakers, and the incredible team behind the scenes. Remember, every great event begins with great people.

[00:25:36] Alyssa Peltier: And that's a wrap. Keep creating, keep innovating, and keep joining us as we redefine how to make events great.