Business events
ITB BERLIN AND MESSE BERLIN: A LIVING LABORATORY FOR THE FUTURE OF EVENTS Messe Berlin – Berlin’s largest exhibition venue and the long-standing home of ITB Berlin – illustrates how sustainability, digitalisation and operational efficiency can be embedded into large-scale events in practice. The Berlin venue provides a real-world setting where many of the themes debated at ITB Berlin are actively implemented across infrastructure, operations and visitor experience. Sustainability is integrated into Messe Berlin’s corporate strategy, with a commitment to operate in a more climate-friendly, socially responsible and resource-efficient way by 2040. A central element of this approach is the “energy transition under the radio tower”, a programme designed to decarbonise the exhibition grounds while retaining the ability to host major global events. A key milestone in 2025 was the commissioning of Berlin’s largest photovoltaic rooftop system, installed across approximately 50,000 sqm of exhibition hall roofs. The system generates around 7.3 GWh of renewable electricity annually, reducing CO2 emissions by 2,500 to 2,900 tonnes per year, with around 80% of the electricity consumed on-site to support exhibition operations, including heating
There is renewed value placed on face-to-face meetings
smoother experience. The digital layers introduced during COVID-19 now complement live attendance. Virtual participation has become a standard option, making events more accessible; studies suggest that digitally enhanced events have expanded total audience engagement by 20-40% compared with pre-2020 formats. Crucially, digitalisation has opened the floodgates of data, offering organisers a wealth of intelligence from which to curate content, optimise scheduling and quantify ROI. Looking ahead, Anke Hsu, Chief Growth Officer at Chain4Travel and ITB Berlin speaker, says that by 2030 technology will move business travel from fragmented bookings to fully orchestrated journeys. “For travellers, the experience becomes frictionless,” she says. “Business travel will no longer feel daunting as a sequence of transactions. Instead, it will become an effortless, even enjoyable experience, enabling travellers to focus entirely on their work, rather than on logistics, because the complexity of travel itself has already been resolved.” Bottom-up pressure to determine policy Technology may be driving things forward, but human demand remains central to the evolution underway within the MICE sector. “Traveller expectations around digitalisation and AI are no longer incremental; they are transformative,” says Professor Dimitrios Buhalis, Director eTourismLab, Bournemouth University. “What we are observing is a clear bottom-up reconfiguration of events organisation and policy, driven by digitally empowered travellers who expect relevance, responsiveness and value co-creation at every touchpoint. They expect hyper-personalisation, real-time information,
frictionless access and ethical data use.” In events, says Buhalis, this translates into demand for seamless digital journeys: intelligent registration, adaptive scheduling, personalised content, smart crowd management and immersive hybrid experiences. When these expectations are not met, dissatisfaction is immediate and publicly amplified through social and review ecosystems, forcing organisers and destinations to rapidly adapt. “This bottom-up pressure is reshaping policy,” he adds. “Rather than technology-led strategies, we now see demand-led governance, where data protection, accessibility, sustainability and inclusion are embedded because travellers expect them. AI is increasingly used not only to optimise operations, but to enable co-creation: attendees shape
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