Artificial intelligence, Augmented Reality and many more digital technologies have matured to useful tools in the exhibition industry over the past twelve months. But still there is a uneasy feeling when talking to exhibition industry executives about digital transformation. This topic has been discussed with lots of executives during several plenary sessions at UFI events. Here are some of the most heatedly discussed statements and why there is still a concerning wait-and-see attitude.

Watch the entire session about “Digital Transformation” at the last UFI European Conference 2018 in Verona. The panel asked the audience, composed of event organisers, venue operators, associations and service providers, to participate and give their opinion in real-time using a polling system.

Slow websites, long registration processes, long queues… The exhibition industry provides a customer experience from 30 years ago, far from the convenience and speed of Google, amazon or Facebook. Some organisers are working on their interfaces, but very few really work on providing a significantly better customer experience.

There are a lot of digital initiatives reported in our industry lately: IT departments are growing nearly everywhere, budgets are increasing and job titles that are pretty new in the exhibition business are arising. A “Chief Digital Officer” and a team with a start-up attitude seem to be a must-have. And it is also a must-do to talk about all these efforts, furthermost to the board of directors.

Privacy laws are changing around the world and becoming more restrictive to protect the rights of individuals at a time when more and more activity is digitally personalised. The European Union started enforcing the new GDPR laws from mid-2018 and other regions are putting similar regulations in place. But will these laws slow down the digital revolution or do they actually present an opportunity for online business by enforcing a more robust and clear basis for digital services?