Events across the USA in 2021: Leading Demand Indicators Report for April 25, 2021
Event rescheduling across the USA increased by 60% this month compared to last month with sports, concerts and performing arts returning faster than other categories (see last week’s report for more detail and upcoming large concerts and sports).
This week, we welcome New York to the top of our list of the busiest cities scheduling in new attended events. We’ve also extended this list from 10 to 25, to better reflect the breadth of event scheduling going on across the nation.
You can see more on this below, but before we dive into our standard graphs, we want to answer one of the questions we’re getting so often from our customers: what’s happening with conferences?
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The return of conferences in 2021 – the state of play so far
Before the pandemic, conferences were a major driver of people movement across the United States and the world. There were hundreds of conferences with more than 10,000 people every week. That all ground to a halt in early 2020. The good news is conferences are returning. While new and rescheduled conferences have been slowly locking in 2021 dates for the last few months, the past two weeks has seen a sudden uptick in their return rate.
The above heatmap is the conferences that were scheduled and identified by our systems in April (so far). So far in 2021, there are more than 15,000 conferences booked across the USA. We expect the conference booking rate to spike over the coming weeks as states continue to remove all restrictions. Upcoming conferences in the next six weeks that need to be in your demand forecasts:
The International Congress of Esthetics & Spa on June 6 -7 in Dallas with up to 3,000 people expected.
International Foundations Conference and Equipment Expo on May 10 - 14 in Dallas with up to 3,000 people expected.
Women of Joy conference on April 30 - May 2 in South Carolina with over 7,000 people expected.
AOA Optometry Meeting on June 24 - 26 in Denver with over 2,000 people expected.
Additive Manufacturing Users Group Conference on May 2 - 6 in Orlando with over 2,000 people expected.
FCCLA National Leadership Conference on June 27 - July 2 in Nashville with 800 people in physical attendance expected.
ATMIA US Conference on June 23 - 25 in Las Vegas with up to 1,000 people expected.
Orthopedics Today Hawaii on May 30 - June 3 in Kihei, Hawaii with up to 750 people expected.
NCVH Annual Conference on June 1 - 4 in New Orleans with up to 1,000 people expected.
Advancing Prefabrication conference on June 15 - 17 in Dallas with up to 1,000 people expected.
Gathering together again: Sports, concerts, performing arts and community events leading the event recovery
Similar to last week, sports and concerts are being booked across the US more than many event categories, but this week has also seen a surge in performing arts events. (Check out some of the larger upcoming concerts and sports in May here.)
But companies that only factor large events into their forecasting will still be caught unprepared by demand anomalies. The volume of the events now, even this early in the recovery, are causing clusters of smaller events that cause perfect storms of demand that are high impact yet often easily missed. Community events, another of the leading event type this week, are often a key element in clusters. For example, here is the aggregated impact of events in Cleveland, Ohio, this May.
The first two of the four significant peaks here are the combination of multiple events, with community events and performing arts events compounding the impact of larger sports events. As you can see, these cumulatively add up to the peak days this month in May 20 to 22, when the Vintage Market Days of Central Cleveland takes place. Even in cities that are scheduling events more slowly than Cleveland, which isn’t even in the top 25 busiest cities, we’re beginning to see clusters of events likely to drive sizeable demand anomalies for companies and cities that are not prepared.
Las Vegas and New York leading the busiest 25 cities this week
Las Vegas continues to reap the rewards of re-opening its performing arts venues but this week has seen New York leap from one of the quieter cities towards the very top of the list. Similar to Las Vegas, this is based on venues re-opening and restrictions easing allowing a sudden flourishing of performing arts events.
In New York so far, these are mostly smaller comedy shows but indicates the pent-up demand in major cities for the return of events. If your business has locations in New York city (stores, accommodation sites etc), get in touch with our team directly to better understand the locations, dates/times and expected attendance of these new events. But the recovery is not just occurring in major cities. This week we have extended this graph from the top 10 cities to the top 25 to better reflect the dynamic and fragmented nature of the event recovery. Many of our customers operate across all of these cities, as well as many more beyond. Each city has its own pandemic recovery rate so it’s never been more important to have verified data that is frequently updated about events across the USA to build into your demand forecasting models to reduce errors and improve accuracy. This is exactly why PredictHQ exists, so get in touch if you haven’t already.
This report seeks to outline the general trajectory and trends of event recovery across the United States. To make the most of events in your forecasting, you will need to use programmatic solutions given how dynamic and large a dataset events are. PredictHQ is supplying our customers with impactful events across the world, both verified and standardized, from 19 categories via a RESTful API. To find out how leading companies such as Uber, Domino’s and major hotel chains are using this data, explore our use cases. We will be releasing weekly editions of this Leading Demand Indicators report. Sign up to receive it in your inbox early each week.