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In the current landscape, planning a corporate event comes with some new and unique challenges. Even during a global public health pandemic, there are still instances when it's important for you to meet with your staff members and corporate partners, whether in person or virtually.

But what does a keen focus on sustainability look like in practise, particularly from a meetings and events perspective? Let's examine a few efforts event hosts and planners can make to help ensure a sustainable event that aligns with consumer and business preferences:

Before planning travel abroad, consider local, domestic destinations for corporate meetings and conferences. As businesses look to shift their travel plans and cautiously put together a strategy, there are some key considerations they can make to help guide their decision-making:

Hosting conferences and gatherings that include some in-person audience members but are also accessible as virtual events is a way to maintain a dialogue with your core audience and stay visible in your market. If you decide that hosting this type of conference, seminar or other gathering is the right move for your organisation, there are a few important priorities to keep in mind while in the planning stages.

Interest and engagement with sustainable practises, particularly from companies and highly visible brands, has peaked in recent years. Now, customers and partners are more concerned than ever with enterprise sustainability and corporate social responsibility, and this extends not only to their internal work and operating processes, but with the events that they host and sponsor as well.

Professionals who plan events both small and large as part of their job may have concerns about just how long the current trend of fully virtual events is going to last. After all, it's just not like the old days and many individuals might lament the loss of in-person conferences.

The way in which business gets done on a daily basis has changed considerably in the past several months, thanks to the novel coronavirus pandemic pushing people out of offices and into their homes on at least a part-time basis. The fact of the matter is that this is a trend that is likely to continue for some time, even as more work returns to traditional settings, as people have grown accustomed to virtual meetings and are increasingly comfortable with them.

The global impact of the novel coronavirus pandemic is almost impossible to calculate at this point, and it could still be another year (or more) before the disease is fully defeated. That leaves a lot of industries in a state of flux and uncertainty, not the least of which is the professional world. That isn't just because business culture may be changed in the long run by the pandemic, but also because conferences, mixers and other corporate events might have to change dramatically in a post-COVID-19 world.

The novel coronavirus pandemic is still raging in many parts of the world, if not Australia itself, and that can be highly disruptive to some aspects of your business. That's especially true when it comes to companies asking employees to travel for business. Whether it's just to another city in your state or to a far-flung location halfway around the world, managers will soon have to account for a host of factors that just didn't exist for business travel as recently as last year.

There is no escaping the fact that business has not proceeded as expected in 2020. Companies of all kinds have been forced to deal with ever-shifting safety regulations and timelines, embracing new working models on a frequent basis. In-person meetings and other events were some of the first things to be canceled as the COVID-19 pandemic first made its impact on companies of all kinds. This has brought a wave of new approaches to connectivity, with businesses harnessing technology to stay connected.

Flight Centre Travel Group (FCTG) released its year-end results on 27 August for its 2020 Fiscal Year, which show an optimistic future for its corporate brands despite a major downturn in the travel industry

In the current landscape, more than a few organisations are pivoting their planned, in-person events to instead take place virtually. These virtual events can extend to everything from shared watch parties or performances, to more formal and interactive conferences and webinars.