The Case For Leaning Into Regional Events

With economic pressures and fuel prices on the rise, regional events are increasingly on the table. And with the right approach, that might prove a secret weapon. 

Real talk: The economic moment is not the hottest, and that might make it hard to convince everyone to travel cross-country, or even globally, to a central venue.

And recent data from ASAE’s State of Associations report suggests continuing attendee declines, especially from outside countries such as Canada. That’s pushing organizations to think regionally in a way that might not have since the pandemic.

“Associations are increasingly exploring a range of approaches to meet people where they are, expand access, and create meaningful engagement opportunities,” says Amy Hissrich, ASAE’s vice president of international affairs.

But what if this disruption is secretly a good thing? Adrian Segar, a noted meetings designer and facilitator, argues that many organizations might find themselves happier with the result.

“Having the opportunity to do local or regional events as opposed to nationals is actually a blessing,” Segar argues. “Because you can create much more successful events: Successful from everyone’s point of view, the sponsors as well as the attendees.”

Read on to get an idea of how events, especially those hosted by associations, can adapt to a moment that might feel more than a little challenging.

Understanding the Economic Factors

The traditional approach to event planning—the big venue with the keynote speaker and the giant expo hall, does have its charm, especially from a marketing and business development standpoint. But the current moment might just force a rethink for some associations.

In its State of Associations report, ASAE noted that 41% of associations reported attendee decreases in 2026, and of organizations seeing financial decline, 68.8% reported meetings revenue being a factor for the decline. According to Hissrich, these factors are causing associations to rethink their strategy.

“What emerged clearly is that associations are evaluating a broad mix of strategies to best serve their communities in a changing environment,” she says. “What we’re seeing is cost-driven shifts: so the business case aligned with a need to serve, as well as continuing upskilling and advancing industries and professions.”

One factor driving the pain? Travel costs. Research from the airline news outlet One Mile At a Time finds that the cost of airfare has jumped by more than 20% over a four-month period. Meanwhile, NerdWallet finds that costs for other common travel expenses, such as car rentals and food away from home, have surged by nearly 10% in the past year.

Meanwhile, global disruption has already forced some events to switch locations. Hissrich notes that event shifts of this nature appear to be “in response to an exogenous event and not a planned strategy,” but it does show flexibility among associations.

“The fact that so many associations are adapting and shifting shows how agile and innovative they’ve become,” she adds.

And regional may not necessarily be the answer for every association, given differing member needs. For example, the Vision Expo announced a plan last year to move from two big events (one for each side of the country) to one larger one, based on member feedback that the organization had too many large events.

But consolidation isn’t the only approach to shifting attendance trends—and it may not be the one your members respond to. Hissrich notes that associations are adapting to economic headwinds by “reducing budgets, refining pricing strategies, and modifying food and beverage commitments to better align with changing attendance patterns and cost sensitivities.”

Some organizations might find going more regional, not less, might be a better strategy. But if they do go that route, they might need to change up the playbook.

Regional Events: Where Small Beats Big

The massive convention center strategy, while great from a financial standpoint, does come with a huge disadvantage, according to Segar: It can be terrible for actually meeting people who share your interests and frustrations.

He explained this by citing how lectures can discourage networking, for example.

“There’s someone sitting maybe three chairs away from me who I would love to meet,” he says. “And I have no way of actually getting into conversation with them. I don’t know who they are.”

Regional events offer an opportunity for a bit of a reset. For one thing, the targeting is naturally going to be better.

“From a content and connection perspective, there’s an opportunity for regional events to provide more locally targeted programming (think local regulatory environment or context), and connections may be able to be nurtured in between events due to proximity,” Hissrich says.

Segar’s approach tends to push things even further, by working from the ground up. Working around a smaller group of attendees, maybe 100 people, and letting them shape the topics they hope to discuss at the event, rather than having a strict schedule beforehand. This approach doesn’t lead with scale or high-profile speakers, but by encouraging attendees to engage with one another—and getting more out of it.

“The smaller the event, the more intimate it could be,” he says. “And if it’s well-designed, the more effective it is—and more efficient it is, really.”

Of course, not every event has to look that way.

For example, some organizations might build around a roadshow approach, where a variation of an event that might have otherwise been national appears in a number of cities over the span of a few months. That’s an approach the Association of Payment Professionals is leaning into this year.

On top of this, there has been growing interest in the hub-and-spoke model, which builds a series of regional hybrid events around larger national ones. This approach, Segar says, can be more effective than a hybrid event on its own.

“The nice thing—and I’ve seen this happen, it works very well—is that the hubs can digest it amongst themselves, instead of sitting by themselves on the screen listening to the person,” he says.

That leads to deeper engagement around the content, and may even offer some advantages from an engagement perspective that big-tent attendees may not get. “The pods can get together and discuss what was being said—disagreeing with it, or liking it, or whatever. And nobody else in this whole national event was doing that at all.”

Don’t Just Shrink Your Big Event

Hissrich adds that different alternative meeting formats (whether hybrid, virtual, or regional) can each prove beneficial in different ways.

“Each format has distinct strengths, cost structures, and operational considerations,” she says. “One of the key lessons associations learned during the pandemic is how to thoughtfully balance those options to create experiences that best serve their members and stakeholders.”

But Segar says that it’s one thing to offer a format, and another to match it to the audience. He often sees event planners take the spirit of the larger event, and present it to a smaller regional audience without many differences.

This tendency, he says, is especially prominent when you’re trying to make the shift towards regional on the fly: “They’re thinking, ‘Okay. How do we scale down the regular thing that we’ve been doing at the national for years?’ And you don’t have to do that.”

The scope of the events can be at odds with the business case, of course, but Segar says shifting the goals can still make the endeavor worth it. After all, if you know you have 200 VIPs in a room, that can be more valuable to big-ticket sponsors than 5,000 rank-and-file members.

Plus, the potential for deep engagement is way higher. One strategy he points to is the idea of “human spectrograms,” an interactive technique where he has attendees focused on similar topics or based in specific geographic areas move to the same area of a room. Segar says he tried this technique with a group of independent pharmacists and found that it helped foster affinities that attendees weren’t even aware of.

“Everyone moves and discovers who else at the conference lives near them geographically,” he says. “Really trivial thing to do. But it’s incredible—people, you know, they’re in the same town, same coast, never met.”

(Segar notes that these more hands-on approaches to event engagement do scale up, but they do require extra work.)

Regional events can hold huge advantages for your attendees, but it’s the implementation that ultimately matters. “They should not be scaled-down versions of nationals,” Segar says.

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