As more hotels provide in-room electronic concierge systems such as Alexa—which can do everything from answer spoken questions to making restaurant and spa reservations—attendees will soon come to expect that event hosts provide on-demand artificial-intelligence (AI) solutions for meeting-related inquiries and needs.
One example of how this personalized technology can benefit event attendees is the eHome module featured within etouches’ event-management platform. It uses AI to make relevant recommendations as attendees fill out an event registration form online. The system leverages its ability to sift through all the data captured from attendees and exhibitors to say, “Here are sessions you’d likely be interested in; here are exhibitors you’d likely be interested in; here are other attendees you’d likely want to meet up with.” A real-time version, where the event app determines an attendee’s location while on site so that its AI capability can make recommendations that are most relevant to that attendee and convenient at that moment, is in the works.
Whitepaper Download – Event Technology Trends: The Significant Seven
A variation of this functionality is the chatbot, which etouches presently has in working trials among several event clients. As people have questions about the agenda and other logistics during the registration process, they can type those directly into the form and get answers that they would otherwise have to email the event team or comb through the event web site to obtain. Anything from “Will Company X be exhibiting at the show?’ to “What are the nearest Italian restaurants to the venue?” can be answered right away.
AI will even assist planners as they do their jobs within the etouches platform. It can act as a “coachbot.” Etouches uses AI to see how planners are using the product, and then advises on how they can use it in the best way for their specific needs. Then planners can put many of their event systems on autopilot. It handles all the manual processes that are tedious and time-consuming.
Brian Friedman is Vice President of Digital Innovation at etouches.
Smart Meetings partnered with etouches to write Event Technology Trends: The Significant Seven, a tool for navigating the innovations that are transforming meetings in 2018. You can download the whitepaper here and access the webinar with Content Chief JT Long here.
