At the Global Meeting and Incentive Travel Exchange (GMITE) held last week at Chateau Elan with the co-located ULTRA Summit, Questex Travel Content/Editorial Director Cameron Sperance led a thought-provoking conversation with Janice Cardinale, VEMM, founder of Event Minds Matter, and Tammy Hsu, CMP, sustainability events manager for S&P Global Intelligence. The conversation focused on trust, well-being and sustainability in luxury travel and events.
Throughout the conversation, Cardinale emphasized the need for emotional intelligence and psychological safety training to foster authentic and empathetic environments, particularly within internal teams, across the MICE industry. She challenged outdated leadership mindsets and called for mandatory psychological safety training across industry associations.
Hsu, in discussing sustainability, argued for a broader, more inclusive definition of the term—one that goes beyond environmentalism to also prioritize human well-being. She underscored the value of designing events that are conscious of both people and the planet, bridging her message with Cardinale’s by advocating for intentional, empathetic practices in event planning.
So, what can the industry do to prioritize these two increasingly important aspects of events and meetings?
“The conversation should be about prioritizing people,” said Cardinale. “And I think you'll all agree that human connection and belonging doesn't happen if you don't prioritize people.” She added, “The one thing that hasn't been established in any of the associations that we may belong to is psychological safety training, which should be something that is mandated for all of us to learn—because you are not born with emotional intelligence.”
Noting that “there's a genuine desire for more authenticity in the meetings and event space,” Sperance asked how we can all do better at creating authentic experiences for attendees. Cardinale brought it back to emotional intelligence: “We all think we're authentic, but the truth of the matter is that authenticity has to also go with empathy.”
“The thing with authenticity is if you want to make your space where you're working with your team authentic, then you have to communicate. You have to make it safe for them. That's the most important thing that it comes to working with other people,” she added.
For her part, Hsu agreed that people need to be a bigger focus on event planning. “A lot of us—when we think sustainability—we think of environmental activism and, yes, that's an aspect of it but, ultimately … we should think about [sustainability] in the framework of being people- and planet-conscious.”
However, in Hsu’s opinion, “the most sustainable event is something that is trying to be as carbon neutral as possible, lowering the impact on the community” and people of a destination. The challenge, therefore, comes with blending luxury experiences with sustainability.
In fact, Hsu doesn’t believe there is a magic combination to achieve both fully. “What I want to stress is that there's no perfect event when it comes to sustainability,” she explained. “We don't want to stress out our event planners [by making them] focus on every aspect of the event being sustainable. That's unrealistic. As a planner myself, I know 100 percent that it’s unrealistic and we have too much on our plates. So, I think the biggest takeaway is that being mindful matters. Starting from somewhere, we can reduce waste.”
The way to start is to have conversations with your suppliers and vendors. Consider partners who have sustainable equipment or LEED certifications, or by swapping from beef to chicken (or vegetarian) options on menus.
That said, Sperance closed with the question: Will we ever get to a point where an event is going to be emotionally safe, sustainable, personalized and profitable?
Said Cardinale: "I think everybody in this audience needs to stay curious. When you are curious, then you learn so much. And I think we have to be more aware."
"I will say that it's good to be ambitious, whether or not we get there, what those measurements are," said Hsu. She noted the "disparities on education around wellness" in the events industry and the challenges of educating masses. Hsu added, however, "whether or not we'll truly get there, I think we can aspire to get there. And I think we're only going to get there one day. Probably going to be beyond my lifetime, too. But we're only going to get there if we aspire to get there."
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