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The Slovenian Tourist Board aims to promote Slovenia as a tourist destination for travelers from all around the world seeking distinctive experiences for peace, and/or personal benefits. In recent years they’ve hosted multiple activities “to increase the recognizability and reputation of the country as an authentic boutique destination for five-star experiences, which is committed to sustainability.”
STB organized physical events but in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, they decided to organize a virtual event titled: FEEL sLOVEni@ Business Date in September and December 2020 using different virtual events hosting platforms. Then moving forward in April 2021, they chose vFairs as their sole virtual event hosting platform.
The period between April and May was the “high time” for STB, therefore since April, they have hosted four virtual events with the vFairs platform. With two events in April 2021 and two events in May 2021.
FEEL sLOVEni@ Business Date is a B2B tourism event in Slovenia that offers networking opportunities and meetings with renowned Slovenian tourism providers. Additionally, the conference offers an amazing opportunity to establish and strengthen business partnerships between foreign tour operators, tour agencies, and the representatives of the Slovenian tourism industry.
We have had a chance to converse with Saša and Tanja – two members of STB’s business communication department about the event and their experience with vFairs.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the main activities of the Slovenian Tourist Board were disabled so they couldn’t proceed with organizing physical events. So, in order to keep the momentum going and “to replace the live events, [they] began looking for the best virtual event hosting solution out in the market,” commented Saša.
The main goal of the event was to “promote Slovenia as a tourist destination”, says Saša. All four of their virtual events included presentations and conferences from global tourism providers, associations, and agencies.
STB was looking for a platform that would have an interactive two-way meeting scheduling process as one of its main functions such that both attendees and tourism providers can seamlessly schedule meetings, and also the platform needed to be fully brand aware. “We wanted to have our brand and Slovenia be prominently exposed at our virtual business event,” says Saša.
Tanja and Saša both did quite a thorough investigation of the best possible options for virtual meetings that were on the market. After doing some research, they had a clear idea of what they wanted and the kind of functionalities they were looking for in their virtual event platform.
User-friendliness, chat options, and meeting schedulers were the top features that they preferred, and weighed each platform against them. After comprehensive market research, they finally chose vFairs and were very pleased with the results and customer support.
“We were very satisfied with colleagues on the other side, vFairs side, with project managers – we were very surprised because there are different time zones between Slovenia and Pakistan, they were so quick in answering and helping us, whether it was a Sunday or Saturday, we always got an answer – compliments for that.” Says Tanja
vFairs offered them an immersive and fully customizable platform. They were truly impressed by the features and here is how vFairs helped make their virtual event dreams come to life.
It made connecting with buyers and delegates easier. There were 24 meeting slots available. Each meeting slot was 15 minutes long; with extra five minutes between each meeting as changed over time.
Approximately 120 buyer delegates met with around 30 Slovenian tourism providers such as hotels, DMC agencies, spas & health resorts, destinations, associations, and tourist attractions. All the exhibitors had their branded booths to showcase their services and content.
STB encouraged the buyers and exhibitors to create their profiles with their descriptions and interests to ensure they had the best chances of receiving a quality appointment schedule for the event. Additionally, profiles let attendees narrow down their search by applying filters to connect and network with delegates and fellow attendees.
STB arranged multiple sessions for the full event experience using our online conference tools. The best part was that all the conference content was available on-demand for attendees during the period of one month after the event.
Buyers and delegates were encouraged to schedule video meetings in advance to improve collaborations and make new connections to benefit their businesses. Since the entire event was virtual, attendees could participate whenever they wanted. In addition, the entire idea of 1:1 meetings was to build relationships and trust through virtual events and to strengthen them in person as soon as possible.
Our virtual briefcase feature enabled attendees to add all of the available documents to their online Swag Bag so that they can share event takeaways with colleagues and friends.
According to Saša, “We didn’t have this quick administrative system before. I needed to upgrade some parts of the system and they were updated in no time which was a value addition. The technical team tried to listen to our needs as much as possible.”
When asked about their favorite part of the whole vFairs platform, Saša said, “I liked the backend…—- where I can see everything, because we had data that only we could access”.
Moreover, the landing page was “very well designed”. It had all the relevant information for both buyers and delegates along with frictionless registration options. Visitors could scroll down the page to learn more about the event agenda, FAQs, and the registration process. The 3D interface of the event venue itself was very attractive as the visuals, the lobby, avatars, and animated options were very eye-catching and close to real events.
“We used platforms where avatars were not that professional, more like a computer game or something. But with vFairs you have a fully brandable lobby and also, the platform was very easy to use, it was also a good thing,” says Tanja.
“Online events are more convenient to measure than live events,” says Saša “ but the common element was the satisfaction of the exhibitors and our partners in both live and online events.” Saša noticed. Additionally, in virtual events, people know beforehand with whom they’d meet, but with live events, it is not that easy.
All in all, they were deeply satisfied with the entire event. For the organizers, “satisfaction of their partners” was the most important KPI and they were very happy with what they had achieved.
When asked about which format they will choose going forward, Saša said, “It is hard to compare virtual events with live events, because the size of the event we host live is much smaller than online. For example, during physical tourism workshops, we invite 15 tourism providers, virtually we could have around 30 and can get even more agents to join” Saša continued, “… and it was also easier to combine the markets, for example, we can have joint workshops with participants from different countries”.
We also asked if they had any trouble promoting the event among exhibitors or attendees, Saša said, “Engagement is very important for us, there are a lot of online events competing with each other these days, we tried our best to get as much engagement with buyers as possible, for example; through different presentations from the experts, and influencers, etc.”
They hope for live events to come back again. For now, Slovenian Tourist Board doesn’t plan to have any hybrid event, but if they decide to have one, then “definitely vFairs will be their first choice”.
Syeda Hamna Hassan
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