Turning audience behaviour into business insights: The AI push to help firms improve MICE event ROI

THE exhibition floor was busy. Meetings ran back to back. Thousands of visitors moved through the exhibition hall. By conventional measures, the event was a success.

But once the crowds have gone, the more difficult questions begin: Who was genuinely interested? What caught their attention? Which conversations are worth pursuing?

Those are questions that attendance figures alone cannot answer. Increasingly, AI can help fill in the gaps.

By tracking and analysing visitors’ engagement patterns in real time, AI can give organisers a clearer picture of what people are responding to, help tailor experiences around their interests and identify interactions that may warrant follow-up, says Lim Kian Meng, senior vice-president of operations for Asia Pacific at The Pico Group, a home-grown brand activation specialist present in 38 cities.

“As event organisers across the region invest in AI, the differentiator will increasingly be how effectively organisations deploy the technology for improved engagement and measurable business outcomes,” says Lim.

Yet the value of AI does not lie in adding technology at every turn.

The opportunity, Lim says, is to identify where it can make an attendee’s journey more useful – whether by helping someone find the right session or business contact, or giving organisers a clearer picture of what audiences respond to.

Pico starts by looking at the attendee journey as a whole – from discovery and registration to on-site engagement, networking and post-event follow-up – then works out where AI can improve the experience.

“We start with the experience, not the technology,” Lim points out. “We focus on combining AI with our decades of experience understanding the attendees’ journey in large-scale events.”

At the SG60 Heart&Soul Experience, a showcase delivered by Pico, visitors first imagined different versions of their future in Singapore. Generative AI was then used to turn their conversations and choices into personalised stories, so each visitor’s journey would unfold differently.

Those interactions gave organisers a real-time view of which themes and choices were drawing the most interest.

“The data gives us live insights. We can then improve the event design and engagement strategies based on the patterns and the data we receive,” Lim says.

Getting more value from AI in MICE

The quest for a two-way exchange points to a broader shift happening across the meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions (MICE) industry, where AI is becoming a strategic priority.

Attendance figures, surveys and anecdotal feedback have traditionally been used to gauge an event’s success. Corporate buyers, however, increasingly want richer data on audience engagement and a clearer view of what their event spending delivered, says Lim.

AI, he adds, can help connect those signals, surface patterns or make recommendations at a speed and level of personalisation that manual analysis cannot.

The shift is already reflected in client demand. According to Pico, 30 to 35 per cent of its clients are now seeking AI-enabled, measurable event experiences – a significant change from five years ago, when such demand was negligible.

Says Lim: “Many organisations are exploring applications, such as visitor analytics, automation and personalisation, because AI is able to create that personalised experience.”

It is why the group aims to integrate AI-enabled solutions into 25 per cent to 30 per cent of its projects by 2030, driven by what it describes as “strong market interest” in more measurable, data-driven event experiences.

Lim says that client demand for data-driven event measurement has increased by 20 per cent over the past two years.

In late July, the company set up a $500,000 Pico Innovation Centre at its headquarters in Kallang to test new ways of improving event experiences.

It partnered with global professional services firm Accenture to provide the AI platforms, data and analytics infrastructure, and enterprise-grade technology solutions underpinning the centre.

Lim says the centre is a “future playground” where its designers can work with clients and technology partners to explore how emerging technologies can be applied to real-world event scenarios.

By testing and refining solutions in this environment, Pico can assess their usability, security and user experience before rolling them out at large-scale public showcases, exhibitions, conferences and other MICE events.

But Lim sees three challenges ahead: client readiness, data governance and security, as well as the skills needed to make effective use of AI.

He says organisations need to know what business objective AI is meant to serve, rather than add a chatbot or avatar simply because it is the latest technology fad.

Once that purpose is clear, organisations need to consider what data AI will draw on and how that data will be managed.

This is especially important for financial institutions, where the use of customer data comes with tighter requirements around privacy, regulatory compliance and controls over how AI systems behave.

Addressing these regulatory and compliance demands requires building tight data governance frameworks before any event goes live.

Even with those safeguards in place, AI is only as useful as the people interpreting and acting on what it produces.

Organisations also need people with data literacy skills and operational knowledge to interpret what AI produces and use those insights to improve how an event is planned and run.

“Technology alone cannot create value. It is the people who know how to apply AI effectively that make the difference. This includes building strong data literacy so that teams can integrate AI solutions meaningfully into the client experience,” Lim notes.

Investing for the long haul

Pico’s longer-term investment is therefore on human capabilities as much as technology.

Pico plans to invest $1 million to build its AI capabilities. The spending will go towards talent and training, stronger data literacy across its teams, technology partnerships and AI-enabled solutions for MICE clients.

Lim says Pico’s priorities are to build its AI talent pool, expand its network of technology partners, scale proven AI solutions with clients and roll these out across the group.

Pico is investing in these capabilities at a time when Singapore is also looking to grow the scale and value of its business events sector.

Under Tourism 2040, the Singapore Tourism Board aims to triple MICE tourism receipts by 2040, as overall tourism receipts are projected to reach $47 billion to $50 billion.

With a potential Downtown MICE Hub set to expand the city’s capacity for business events, the industry will play a vital role in Singapore’s tourism economy.

As the sector grows, delivering greater value and measurable impact from every event will become increasingly important.

“The real opportunity with AI is not to make events more high-tech,” Lim says. “It is to make every interaction more relevant, and give businesses a clearer understanding of what those interactions achieved.”

Learn how Pico can help create more responsive, data-driven MICE experiences.