IMEX America 2026 Smart Monday教育日要点：MPI合作认证、ITI 2026数据与活动设计趋势汇总

IMEX America kicked off on Monday, October 12, at Mandalay Bay. the tradeshow's first day, Smart Monday, begins with education sessions powered by MPI. Three Meetings Today reporters–Tyler Davidson, Rob Carey and Taylor Smith–are onsite covering North America’s biggest meetings-industry show. Below are their takeaways from Smart Monday: 

[Related: IMEX America 2026 Highlights: Our Complete Event Coverage] 

Tyler Davidson, Vice President & Chief Content Director

• New wellness event pro certificate: Olympian Meeting announced a partnership with MPI Academy to launch a Certified Event Wellness Professional credential program. According to Olympian Meeting Co-Founder and Wellness Architect David T. Stevens, the new credential is for event professionals who want to design wellness into the experience, and not “bolt it onto the agenda.” It will apply the “4 M’s: Mindfulness, Movement, Meaning and Meals,” and help build practical, inclusive strategies that connect well-being decisions to measurable event outcomes, which Stevens has dubbed ROW (Return on Wellness). Modules will include: attention and cognitive load; circadian rhythm; sleep and recovery; nervous system regulation; sensory load; and agenda pacing and design. “If the brain is exhausted, the content doesn’t matter,” Stevens said. The effort is joined by numerous top contributors, including many Ph.Ds in disciplines of mindfulness, movement, meaning and meals, including frequent Meetings Today contributor Tracy Stuckrath, an inclusive culinary concierge for events. The credential program also features the oversight of academic contributor Thomas C. Padron, Ph.D., professor at Cal State East Bay School of Hospitality.

• A keynote that tackles event design in the age of AI: MPI Smart Monday keynote speaker Caitlin Krause, author of “Digital Wellbeing,” delivered a presentation that reminded the audience to deliver authentic experiences for attendees as well as making sure to consider their own well-being in a time of information and AI overload. “When we design experiences for others, sometimes we forget ourselves,” Krause said. “What is the intention in this age of overwhelm? What keeps us engaged in this era of overwhelm?” A designer by trade, Krause contends this age of overwhelm has created an “attention problem that’s become a connection problem…Let’s become critical thinkers, not cynical thinkers. Planners are tasked with proving ROI and experiences people remember. It’s not about transcending reality. It’s about  using it, needing it, and designing what’s most needed in the moment at a time of overwhelm.” Krause pushed back against the tendency to lean on AI and neglect the human touch, which can result in generic content and incorrect assumptions that can go unnoticed. “It’s not enough to do a digital detox, escape and then come back to the commotion,” she contented. “AI seems to be sanding every edge, flattening everything into one cookie-cutter answer. How do we show up as humans in a tech-enabled landscape?”  

• Big Data is the new foundation of in-person events: In their “Big Data and Why You Should Ask Your Production Partner for It” session, presenters Zak Roby, VP, growth and strategy for Show Gear Productions, and Vamshi Velmajala, CEO and co-founder of Snapsight, made the case that production companies are in the best position to collect the most-important data from events. Planners need to inquire about the data-collecting acumen of their production companies and often sign on with them for a three-year contract to get the biggest return on that data. “Don’t make your event ‘hunch-based,’ Roby told the audience, arguing that context, and not content, is king. “Use data to say the right thing to the right audience at the right time, and data only pays off when it changes a decision.” Roby stressed that great data will help deliver what is rapidly becoming the prime selling point of live business events—networking with the people who are most beneficial to your job. Because production companies operate in perhaps the greatest number of touchpoints and know venues the best, they are in a prime position to collect data on all kinds of attendee behavior and improve functions across many event functions, such as registration, procurement, programming and post-event analysis. “Use your data to make your event cool,” he summed up. 

  [Related: Measures of Success: Determining ROI, ROO, ROE]

Rob Carey, Content Manager, News & Features

• Leveraging the unique elements of your international destination: In a session titled "Design Workshop for International Meetings," Ksenija Polla, director of national & international development at Talley Management Group, said that "if your experience could have happened anywhere else, you missed the opportunity." Her advice: Make space at the meeting venue for informal encounters between attendees and local representatives of the cultural elements of the destination. And with offsite tours, have participants actively engage in local traditions rather than simply observing them and hearing from a tour guide. "Generating surprise in attendees while they take in a new cultural experience together makes for a strong sense of belonging, and creates strong memories," she said.
• Polite vs. professional: Also in that international meeting design session, Shawn Cheng, regional director, North America for ICCA, noted that "planners need to know what is considered polite, and what is considered professional, when working with a host destination. Culture and customs are different in every location." This can be true even among different cities in a single country—think Omaha versus New York City. Cheng added that planners who learn the local ways of communicating and conducting business early in their planning cycle will make their relationships with a host destination's partners as collaborative and productive as possible.

[Related: How to Plan an Authentic Hawaiian Lūʻau for Meetings and Events] 

• One other international meetings tip: Provide destination reps with a vision to get ideas flowing, according to Ariella Fong, senior event and project manager for International Conference Services. Her suggested approach: "This is how we want our people to interact and to feel during this activation. What do you recommend? An example: For a 1,500-person conference in Seoul, South Korea last year, Fong had a reception on the venue's rooftop that was set up as a traditional Korean night market, complete with merchandise and foods that are typically served. Attendee feedback for the experience was very positive, and many photos of the experience appeared on attendees' social media.
• Creating culture: "Culture used to be built in corporate offices—but now, culture is built in meeting rooms." So said Mark Cooper, CEO of the International Association of Conference Centers, in a session titled "IACC's Meeting Room of the Future." "The role of the live event is to build culture. Conference centers understand this and want to collaborate with planners to use the event spaces to achieve this objective." In fact, two-thirds of IACC venues see experience creation as their responsibility, and more than 90% of them use food and beverage events to do this. And with alcohol consumption down, more venues are creating fun experiences around making non-alcoholic libations for attendees, and showing them how to make such drinks at home. In addition, Cooper cited more of IACC's recent research of venue managers to highlight changes in other areas of event design. For instance, venues are adapting their spaces to deliver more natural light, more plants and shrubbery, and more living-room style seating—fully 64% of venue managers said they purchased more lounge seating in the last year.

Taylor Smith, Content Manager, Destinations

• Incentive Travel Index 2026: The Global Pulse of Incentive Travel: Every year, the results of the Incentive Travel Index (ITI), “the business events industry's most authoritative study of the global incentive travel market,” are released during MPI’s Smart Monday at IMEX America. Drawing on 2,100 professionals across 83 countries, this year’s study, produced by SITE Foundation and the Incentive Research Foundation (IRF) with research partner Oxford Economics, examined shifting incentive-travel budgets, destination selection, industry risks, AI adoption and how programs can demonstrate business value. Here are key takeaways from the ITI session during Smart Monday:

  • Expectations for growth cooled sharply: The share expecting incentive travel to increase fell from 60% in 2025 to 25% in 2026, a marked shift from optimism toward a more cautious outlook. “A year ago, we were a lot more optimistic,” said Padraic Gilligan, consultancy and research, SITE. “Now, we're a lot more realistic.”

    

  • Programs face more scrutiny to demonstrate ROI, not simply justify travel: Panelists said stakeholders are making more deliberate decisions and want the program’s purpose and return to be clear. “The stakeholders are being very intentional in their decision-making process,” said Kim Napolitano, executive director, global industry relations, Hilton Worldwide Sales. “They're looking at cost from the standpoint of access. They want to understand, ‘Will I feel welcomed into the location where we're looking at?’ So, I think there's a lot more to the decision process than we may have realized before, but the scrutiny, what I've seen, is next level. And for us to be able to talk about return on investment and come together as a community to share that is absolutely critical, because we can lean into the actual purpose of what the incentive trip is about.”

[Related: SITE Foundation Impact Report: How Investment Strengthens Incentive Travel] 

• Spending is being directed toward the overall quality of the reward, and spend per person is up 7.8% to $5,500: Panelists described investment in premium hotels and destinations, upgraded air, and more inclusive experiences, rather than a single isolated category. “Clients are investing in the overall experience, not one specific category,” said Abby Sherman, assistant vice president of sales, ITA Group. “We're seeing investment trends in premium hotels and destinations, upgraded air, a more inclusive experience overall, and at the same time, costs continue to rise. So, the real challenge here becomes how do you maintain that perceived value of the reward?...We're really seeing clients prioritize and focus on making specific moments that are memorable, and to do that without having to compete with rising costs, we're seeing a lot of clients pique their interest and focus in on sponsorship as a way to really maintain or elevate that experience.”

• A lower “experiences” line item doesn’t necessarily mean experiences matter less: Panelists cautioned that activities may be counted under other categories—such as dining—or delivered through a more self-directed destination experience. “The upper echelon of spend per person is going up, so that doesn't necessarily mean we're spending less on experiences,” said Justin Myers, vice president of marketing, industry and partner relations. Bishop-McCann. “It means budgets are going up to cover those rising costs, and we're spending the same.”

  

• Safety, trust and the perception of being welcome in a destination can outweigh cost: Once a destination is recognized for high-profile instability, nearly 22% of respondents said they might wait three to five years before reconsidering an affected destination. “Safety, ultimately, is about trust and confidence with who we are working with,” said Virginie De Visscher, executive director, business events, Destination Canada. “So, our role as destinations is really to provide that credible source of information so that the planner can make an informed decision. It means connecting with people on the ground, providing the right information, the right resources and being super transparent about what really is happening, and helping the planer work through their contingency plans.”
• The long-term challenge is proving business impact: The session connected rising costs and budget pressure with the need to show how programs support outcomes such as sales, loyalty and talent retention. The goal is to design experiences that are motivational, memorable, meaningful and measurable. “If report shows one thing, it's that change is happening at the very best, and what maybe worked last year is not working this year,” Sherman said. “So, if we can get better at answering the question of, ‘What happens after this experience?’ and tying that back to what the client is looking for, and if we can design programs around that, I think we'll be far more successful.”
• Live event trends: What’s changing vs. what actually matters: Attendees filled the tables and lined the walls during this packed Smart Monday session led by Dave Merrell, CEO of AOO Events, who discussed the cultural, creative and technological forces shaping live events and redefining meaningful experiences in 2026. The world is moving at a rapid, unpredictable and overwhelming pace right now, and attendees are experiencing fatigue in the day-to-day, bouncing back and forth in the news between wars, elections, economic uncertainty, AI, natural disasters and more. To help people escape from all of this, today’s event design is shifting from spectacle toward something more restorative and human-centered, an approach that provides relief, connection and presence. “We’re moving away from ‘Look at me’ to ‘Feel this,’” Merrell said. “Less noise, more intention...People don’t want to be impressed anymore; they want to feel held. They want to feel confident, welcomed.” It’s restorative escapism, and things like immersion, wellness, nostalgia, themed events, flexible seating and distinctive venues are all gaining importance as a result of its rise in event design. “Nostalgia is the most important, powerful shortcut to immersion,” Merrell said. “Not take me somewhere unreal, but give me a place where I can breathe. Give me a moment where I can recess. Let me feel like myself today...The best experiences are the ones that help [people] return to this world we’re in a little bit more grounded than when they arrived.”

• Eventualists Record at IMEX America: Stay tuned for this month’s episode of the Eventualists podcast set to launch Thursday morning, which co-hosts Taylor Smith and Hannah Elston filmed together in-person from the heart of the Las Vegas Strip ahead of IMEX America. Tune in for a special video episode in which Taylor and Hannah reflect on the full-circle moment for them: returning to where it all started two years ago at the IMEX-MPI-MCI Future Leaders Forum as co-moderators of the 2026 program. Plus, what they wish they knew before their first IMEX, tips for tackling the show floor and more.

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