While events and group business streams have largely laid dormant through the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic, hotel brands and operators say conversations and future bookings with meetings planners show dramatic changes in what they're looking for in some events.

This includes expansions of what the industry had dubbed "hybrid events," which include combinations of in-person meetings and conferences with teleconferencing and online meetings. This concept is being taken to new heights particularly at Hyatt Hotels Corp. properties, with Hyatt President and CEO Mark Hoplamazian noting in recent earnings calls that his company is hosting pharmaceutical industry conferences that span across dozens of hotels.

Steve Enselein, senior vice president of events for Hyatt and one of the leaders of their Together by Hyatt platform, said a shift to hybrid events hosted at various properties opens up new revenue opportunities across their brand portfolio, with select-service brands like Hyatt Place or Hyatt House now able to participate in large conferences that used to strictly be the purview large-box brands like Hyatt Regency and Grand Hyatt. It also can change a meeting planner's calculus on what markets can host events.

"Our customers are really the ones driving this," he said. "They're trying to regionalize and let [attendees] drive instead of fly. They're drawing a circle of maybe a four-hour driving radius and figuring out which cities [can host in that area]. We're not making customers source all 40 locations, though. Our team coordinates the logistics so a meetings planner isn't planning 40 meetings."

He said the approach to those fragmented events is rather simple, which helps keep the tech requirements manageable and affordable at smaller properties. Essentially, a large property serves as a central hub and hosts things like keynotes and general sessions, broadcasting that out to the various participating properties, which will then hold their own region-specific breakout sessions to complement.

And all of this can be hosted on an online platform through Hyatt or on different platforms favored by planners or organizers. Enselein said one big part of this transition to greater hybrid event participation is educating planners on what they're equipped to accomplish and how to better meet their needs going forward.

Even things like food and beverage offerings can be customized to help the events feel unified in some ways but more region-specific in others.

"We want to make the event similar in each location, but in Boston they might serve clam chowder and lobster rolls, while in Los Angeles, they'd serve fish tacos," he said. "It's a comparable experience but not identical."

Similarly, Marriott International officials have been making nationwide efforts to let planners know what's available in this new era of events, hosting pop-up "Learning Labs" across the U.S. that have shown "more than 3,000 meetings professionals" how things can change going forward, said Tammy Routh, senior vice president of global sales, in an email interview.

"What we learned during these labs is while many meeting professionals know they need to hold hybrid meetings, it is more complex and expensive to do so," she said. "This is where the partnership with all suppliers — hotel, AV companies, technology platforms, etc. — is critical."

Those Learning Labs showed off the various changes made to the in-person component of hybrid events, including onsite COVID-19 testing, temperature screenings, social distancing for sessions and food and beverage, along with the tech components required for online attendees and connecting various sites.

Enselein said participation in the Together by Hyatt program was optional for owners as it did require some investment in meetings tech, which included making sure a property had the appropriate bandwidth and networking solutions to connect with other properties. But he also said the brand has worked hard to keep those costs to a minimum at a time when hotel owners and operators are already working on shoe-string budgets.

He also noted the guidance on how to participate isn't handed down as hard brand standards but as property-by-property assessments of what would need to be done. And flexibility will be key going froward.

"Our guidance to hotels is on a case-by-case basis, and if you think your market is primed for hybrid events, you can make an investment," he said.

Many smaller properties need less in terms of bandwidth improvements because they are on the "receiving end, not the broadcasting end" of events, he said. They can find creative solutions like prioritizing bandwidth to meetings and events during the day when there is less demand from guest rooms.

Hotels do need to make sure they have some video conferencing technology in place, but for larger meetings, hotels within the brand are encouraged to cooperate to scale up in a cost effective way.

"You can go to a sister hotel and borrow that technology," he said.

He said this flexibility is going to be the key of making these meetings work going forward.

"There is no one-size-fits-all solution for hybrid events," he said. "They're all unique, interesting animals and used in different ways."

Even though the idea of hybrid events is still relatively new, both Enselein and Routh said they've seen approaches evolving quickly over time.

"People had ideas about what these would be like early on, but now nobody sees this as a four-day event with every general session and breakout broadcast across 15 cities," Enselein said. "That's not practical. Now they want key messages and key sessions done on the hybrid platform [in one location] with other [breakout] sessions done face to face in multiple locations."

Routh said what planners need from hotels right now is the ability to provide a sense of security and flexibility to attendees.

"What really seems to resonate is the need to plan meetings that offer attendees control of their space, behaviors, and options, based on comfort level," she said.

Routh said her company was seeing growing interest in the idea of hybrids even before the pandemic, but the COVID-19 era shift to virtual events has accelerated that change.

"Hybrid meetings already existed prior to COVID, but the concern over travel, social distancing and more has enhanced the need for them," she said. "We find that this topic really varies by customer and by meeting type as it all depends on the objective of the meeting. It appears our customers are trying to find the right balance of face to face and virtual to maximize the return on investment of their meetings."

Health and safety concerns that arose during the pandemic are a primary driver of the shift to hybrid meetings, but Enselein said he believes there will be sustained demand for them going forward, particularly from large corporate clients.

"We think this is going to be the way of doing things going forward, but there are a finite number of groups that are interested in doing hybrid events," he said.

The pool of companies and planners interested in hybrid events could grow over time as they become more common and people see how they operate in person.

"The big companies are the first adopters, but everyone is looking at how this works," he said, noting the early hybrid events will still be a learning experience for hotels, meeting planners and corporate clients alike.

Even with an expanded offering for hybrid events, Enselein said the majority of forward-looking bookings still favor a more traditional meetings and conference set-up, as planners and attendees are looking for an experience that feels like a return to normal.

"Fewer people are interested in hybrid than face to face," he said. "People are hoping this is a 15-month blip on the radar, but a number of organizations are seeing this as a huge opportunity. [Over the course of the pandemic], everyone went virtual, and some organizations and events quadrupled their attendance.

"They're going, 'Oh gosh, my citywides with 6,000 to 7,000 attendance now has 100,000 [attendees], so we're going to continues to have the citywide with 7,000 but add those hybrid pieces to extend the reach of the events."

Routh said that over time, her company is seeing more movement to traditional events returning with "the face-to-face component growing and the virtual number of attendees becoming smaller." But she said it's also important to remember it's not an either/or situation.

"It’s important to call out that hybrid meetings do not necessarily mean a reduction in the number of attendees for the face-to-face portion of the meeting or event," she said. "The objective for our customers is to find a way to expand the reach of their meeting content to people who cannot travel to the meeting site."

Routh said Marriott's internal research has shown continued strong interest in hybrid events at least in the near term, growing interest in a return to in-person events, but steeply declining interest in strictly virtual events.

Tim DeBruin, corporate director of catering for Davidson Hospitality Group, said his company has seen hybrid events gaining steam within its portfolio in recent months, going from 22% of their hosted events in November to 32% in March. And its seeing interest across all types of group demand.

"Social events have embraced hybrid as a way to share their special moments — weddings, graduations, showers — with their extended family," he said via email. "Associations are finding this as a way to effectively execute their membership meetings according to their bylaws. Most associations have a structure that requires a minimum amount of meetings per year."

In terms of implementing these events, DeBruin said it's always important to start with as clear of an idea as possible on what customers want.

"It starts out with robust qualification of what the client is trying to accomplish with their event," he said. "Our teams then collaborate with all of the resources needed to meet the client’s vision and ultimately provide the client with multiple options of how they can proceed."

He said he's glad to see alignment on the need to grow hybrid events from both the brands and ownership groups his company works with, noting owners have been "very supporting of providing the necessary resources" and brands have been largely focused on "educating both property teams and potential clientele of the benefits and choices within the hybrid event spectrum."

Hybrid events will be key in the near term, as Davidson's own survey of planners in March showed 54% anticipate returning to pre-pandemic spending levels by 2022, DeBruin said. While many event attendees might opt for the online components of hybrid meetings over lingering health and safety concerns, he is hopeful hybrid events might actually induce demand for in-person attendance.

"Participant willingness to attend in-person events and safety protocols remain our top two challenges, and these vary greatly from state to state and even city to city," he said. "We are finding that much of the desire to go hybrid is centered around these two major factors. However, I believe that exposure to digital components over the course of the pandemic will drive the desire to include some of these components in their post-pandemic event productions."