As AI continues to be integrated into business, Nick Borelli is encouraging event planners to use AI to go further, not just faster.
Nearly two out of three corporate planners name strategic planning and developing fluency with AI as the most important skills that they and their teams must develop in the coming year, according to survey data in the “PCMA 2026 Outlook” report. A similar demand for sharper strategic skills was identified among association planners, with nearly half (46 percent) reporting that strategic planning is their most needed skill — although AI literacy ranked much lower, at 17 percent.
Nick Borelli
While the majority of planners — 91 percent — are using AI, only half of that percentage use AI tools for the kinds of analysis that would inform their planning and strategy, according to event industry data compiled in the Event AI Index, by Highbar.ai.
One of the biggest competitors of data-driven decision-making in the event industry is planners’ own instincts, said Nick Borelli, an instructor for the PCMA Institute’s Enhancing Events with AI certificate course. And that’s hard to overcome, Borelli added, because planners “have really good guts,” he said. “But the thing that I think is never said out loud is that the true ask of an event organizer is to not fail,” he said. When it comes time to look at post-event data and surveys, many planners are scanning the data to see if they failed or not, Borelli said. “Event planners know in their gut every time how to not fail.” What they don’t always know, he added, “is how to use data to find ways to do things 10 percent better.”
Using AI tools to analyze post-event data can help planners move beyond that binary pass/fail thinking by identifying the most valuable feedback and finding patterns in their data that might otherwise be missed, he said. He recommends asking questions designed to align event performance to your organization’s goals, such as: “Is there anything in our feedback that violates our mission?” and “Is there anything in this data that points to a path for additional revenue?”
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Making the Case for More Resources
AI also can help planners address a major challenge flagged in PCMA’s outlook report: trying to innovate within budget constraints. Nearly half — 45 percent — of association planners named doing more with fewer or limited resources as a challenge, and three out of five corporate planners reported that budget reallocation was having a major impact on their role. To help make the case to their leaders for more resources, Borelli recommends that planners use AI tools like Spark to reframe post-event reports in the language that executives use in their roles. For the CFO, for example, rewrite your report by identifying opportunities for revenue growth, he said, and areas where your event can help the organization mitigate financial risk.
As AI continues to evolve and be integrated into business, Borelli is encouraging event planners to use AI to build processes, he said. In 2026, “most of my AI sessions are now leaning less toward how to do everything [with AI] and more toward how to do things for excellence.”
Bridging the AI Skills Gap
The ability to use AI to enable data-driven decision-making is one of the top skills that event professionals will need in the future, according to survey data and analysis in the “PCMA 2026 Outlook” report. Although both association and corporate sectors emphasized the importance of AI and digital literacy, corporate event planners identified the need much more frequently and with more urgency.
Corporate sector:
63 percent say that GenAI is the top skill that they and their teams should develop in the next 12 months.
43 percent identify AI and data-driven measurement as the biggest opportunity in event marketing.
24 percent say that AI, data, and event tech are becoming core to their roles.
Association sector:
17 percent identified AI, data, and digital literacy as an area they and their teams should strengthen over the next five years.
22 percent say that “AI is moving faster than our ability to keep up.”
Barbara Palmer is Convene’s deputy editor.
The “PCMA 2026 Outlook” report is free to PCMA and CEMA members; everyone has access to the report’s executive summary. Learn more about it and other reports at pcma.org/pcma-insights.
