Reimagining the live event experience

Smart and sustainable event organization

No one expected COVID to kill the live events business, but the 12 months after March 2020 certainly placed unprecedented strain on the industry. With venues shuttered and employees happy to video call, companies, merchants, and businesspeople found new ways to engage.

Three years later and the events industry is back, though it is far from unchanged.

“We’re at the same revenue levels as 2019,” says Corine Bos, director of IT and digital at Royal Jaarbeurs. “What’s different is that we now host a far more diverse range of events.”

Among Europe’s major event organizers, Royal Jaarbeurs has an enviable proposition. Its venue is located in the vibrant heart of Utrecht, offering easy access to local bars, restaurants, and cultural attractions. It stands out from typical out-of-town venues, offering a dynamic experience. Its versatile space can cater to intimate meetings of four people, provide collaborative workspaces for startups, or host 86,000 sqm trade events—with capacity for up to 2.5 million visitors per year. And, with a 100-year history, it has tremendous brand recognition among businesses and trade associations in the Netherlands.

“We spent the quiet months of COVID investing in our future,” says Bos. “We want to transform into a data company.”

Teun Schermerhorn, general IT manager at Royal Jaarbeurs, is even blunter in his ambitions: “Royal Jaarbeurs’ mission is to be the smartest, most sustainable event organizer in Europe.”

Switching from paper to digital

Smart and sustainable can have many meanings to many different organizations. For Royal Jaarbeurs it certainly involves switching from paper to digital, making the best use of resources, and being the best possible community partner.

Royal Jaarbeurs wants to provide wayfinding for visitors across its 11 halls and offers digital ticketing, event guides, and an e-commerce experience for those interested. Standard event facilities can be ordered or upgraded through the Royal Jaarbeurs app. Customers can access network as a service at various levels, ranging from 4MB to 1GB, tailored to meet their specific event needs. Royal Jaarbeurs also wants to track valuable assets, better schedule maintenance, and offer closer links to the attractions within the city. Recognizing the reality of a hybrid world, it has built broadcast facilities on-site.

“We know customers want to livestream an event or make a podcast,” says Bos. “We’ve invested in the sort of equipment to handle those requests.”

It works closely with the city of Utrecht which has a strong local healthcare industry; Royal Jaarbeurs is building events around this vertical. The city is also the home of cycling in the Netherlands; Royal Jaarbeurs now hosts Dutch Cycling Week. “If we work together, we can be a bigger force,” says Bos.

Though Royal Jaarbeurs aspires to be the best in the industry, it takes its inspiration from far and wide. The company is working with The Social Hub (formerly The Student Hotel), another Dutch business, on the digital experience for guests. It is looking at online retailers for ecommerce workflows and theme parks for queue management and priority lanes.

“We want to understand how digital can create new efficiencies but also support human engagement. It’s really important we keep a warm, welcoming face to Royal Jaarbeurs,” Bos explains.

Creating a dynamic network as a service

To drive these changes, and create a new level of event experience, Royal Jaarbeurs has upgraded its entire network. Through its engagement with HPE Aruba Networking, and its long-term IT service partner Wentzo, Royal Jaarbeurs has standardized network hardware and management, creating a high-performance, flexible platform. The network becomes as flexible and multipurpose as the Royal Jaarbeurs event space.

The HPE Aruba Networking architecture is built on the latest generation CX switches in the core, distribution, and access layers, Wi-Fi 6 access points serve as IoT gateways, and ClearPass is used for managing and automating network access control. HPE Aruba Networking Central provides a cloud-native, AI-powered management platform for the entire network. As part of the AI-powered monitoring and service assurance, UXI sensors deliver real-time insights into network performance, ensuring customer SLAs are met while providing a real-time dashboard of critical network parameters and resources for specific locations. Dynamic segmentation, on the other hand, establishes secure end-to-end boundaries between users, devices, or things.

“The network-as-a-service concept provides Royal Jaarbeurs with great business agility,” says Schermerhorn. “We have quiet periods of the year and extremely busy ones. The HPE Aruba Networking architecture allows us to scale network services up or down as required, we don’t need to over- or under-provision.”

In an industry that has felt the squeeze, there is a commercial benefit to this - Royal Jaarbeurs can pay for its network out of OpEx rather than CapEx, with cost transparency for event customers.

“As a service means Royal Jaarbeurs can easily add extra bandwidth, should a client need it,” says Bos. “Plus, we don’t need to run in extra cables. Being Wi-Fi first, we can manage everything through the HPE Aruba Networking Central platform with no new hardware to install.”

The advantage is that network management is now more straightforward. HPE Aruba Networking Central provides centralized visibility into all network activities, both wired and wireless. Wentzo handles technical issues and reporting, reducing the need for in-house IT resources. Royal Jaarbeurs’ focus, Bos restates, is on human, visible client servicing:

“With the basics automated or taken care of through AI-powered intelligence, our human touch can be the cherry on top.”

Schermerhorn says the network also delivers the most precious of modern business resources: data.

“We can see footfall and heat maps of busy areas—so if an exhibitor tells us their stand was quiet, we can show them the passing traffic,” he explains. “We can determine if facilities are being over- or under used, which helps us manage onsite teams. We know what type of device is connecting to the network, and how the connectivity is being used. Through the app downloads and Wi-Fi sign-up, we’re also capturing a great deal of marketing data.

“We know we have a broad audience at Royal Jaarbeurs. With HPE Aruba Networking ClearPass, we can recognize different profiles of users and devices and implement smart segmentation based on defined policies.”