Hybrid Events Breaking the Borders: Transferring your hybrid event into an engaging and inclusive experience for different audiences and stakeholders

Abstract

This thesis explores hybrid events and how they can be made into an engaging experi-ence for different audiences and stakeholders. Changes in the factors affecting choos-ing of a conference location due to the COVID-19 pandemic will be reviewed and what that will mean for the face-to-face and virtual meetings moving forward. The main goal of this study is to produce beneficial information and recommendations for event organizers, Messukeskus Helsinki and other conference venues on how to plan engaging hybrid events. The primary data sources for the empirical study was a survey where event industry professionals answered questions regarding situation before and after COVID-19 pan-demic and what it could potentially mean for the industry. Expert professionals were interviewed after the results came in to gain insights on the research questions. The aim of the qualitative method was to find out more about the hybrid events and how they can be made engaging. The findings indicated that hybrid events will be the new norm in regards event organiz-ing moving forward and for those events feel engaging, there needs to be interaction between all stakeholders. This paper will only be dealing with part of the study results that are relating for the subject at hand. Further research will need to be conducted to get a deeper understanding on how other industries could be helping in understanding different stakeholders.