I just read the Amex 2026 Global Meetings & Events Forecast. It reflects how the industry is currently thinking about live events: tighter budgets, greater scrutiny, and a growing focus on return on experience.
The problem is that ROE is still framed as something to be evaluated after an event, rather than designed into it from the start.
Most discussions about ROE begin once the event is over. Surveys are sent, sentiment is analysed, and explanations are assembled about what worked and what did not. By that point, the experience has already happened. The impact has already been felt by attendees, speakers, clients, and teams.
If return on experience matters, it needs to be shaped early and deliberately, not assessed after the fact.
Experience does not appear on its own. Live events are pressured and complex. Plans look coherent until reality intervenes. Requirements change, stakeholders multiply, timelines slip, and information fragments across inboxes, decks, spreadsheets, and conversations that never quite get written down.
In that environment, events often succeed because someone holds everything together.
There is usually a programme manager at the centre of the process who carries the full picture in their head. They know what should be happening, what is actually happening, and what different people believe is happening. They absorb uncertainty, reconcile conflicts, and translate chaos into something workable. When the event goes well, the result feels smooth and controlled. The effort behind that outcome remains invisible.
This is where experience is shaped. Long before anyone arrives onsite, hundreds of small decisions are made under pressure and with incomplete information. How early clarity is established, how often plans change, how quickly decisions are communicated, and how clearly priorities are understood all influence how the event feels. These choices affect stress, confidence, trust, and how people remember the experience.
Experience is often the result of how well complexity is managed.
Planning shapes how people feel throughout the lifecycle of an event. Clear sequencing reduces mental load. Defined ownership lowers anxiety. Shared context prevents confusion and second guessing. When planning is fragmented, experience suffers even if the final production looks polished. When planning is coherent, people feel calmer and more confident, often without knowing why.
These effects matter more now than they did in the past. Live events operate under sustained pressure. Budgets are tighter, teams are smaller, and expectations around sustainability and accountability are higher. In this context, experience cannot depend on improvisation or individual heroics alone. It needs to be intentional.
Cost pressure increases the need for clarity and foresight. Poor planning leads to rework, waste, burnout, and rushed decisions. Thoughtful planning reduces unnecessary spend and lowers environmental impact. Return on experience, return on investment, and sustainability outcomes are shaped by the same underlying decisions.
Until recently, designing for experience at this level required time and attention many teams did not have. Planning became reactive, and original intent eroded under urgency. This is where new technology, particularly AI, changes what is possible.
Used well, AI helps teams maintain context across the full event lifecycle. It surfaces dependencies, highlights risk earlier, and reduces repetitive coordination work. This changes how people spend their time. Less effort goes into chasing information or rebuilding plans. More attention goes into judgement, priorities, and decision quality.
This also reframes how data fits into the picture. Experience is often described as qualitative, but it leaves signals everywhere. Repeated questions point to unclear communication. Escalations suggest trust issues. Workarounds reveal broken processes. Constant replanning shows missing context. These patterns appear throughout an event, not just at the end, and they support better decisions while there is still time to act.
Goals play a role, but they only take you part of the way. Experience is intentional. It is created through thousands of small decisions made from the outset and carried through as plans evolve. When decisions lack shared context or clear priorities, experience degrades. When they are aligned and supported, experience improves as a result.
This is what experience architecture looks like in practice. Calmer teams. Clearer plans. Fewer surprises. Events feel considered from the first invitation to the final follow up, not because everything goes perfectly, but because intent holds as reality changes.
Return on experience improves when it is designed into how events are planned and delivered.
In the end, the future of ROE comes down to how well we plan.