What Meeting Planners Need to Know About Event Attendees in 2026

Something’s different. Your attendees are harder to please. The sessions that used to kill are landing flat. And it’s making you second-guess your programming. You’re not imagining it; the rules really have changed.

After talking to more than a million people across 180 countries, we have statistically accurate data on what actually motivates human beings, including event attendees. And it turns out it has nothing to do with age, gender or job title. It’s all about their values. When you know what your audience values, in other words, what matters most to them, you can design experiences that they actually care about.

We just wrapped a Valuegraphics study explicitly built for the meetings industry. Thousands of event attendees from around the world, all ages, all sectors. We wanted to know what they value, and what that means for the people designing their experiences.

Here’s what we found.

People Don’t Act Their Age Anymore

Demographics are terrible predictors of behavior. Our research shows that people within the same demographic category only agree with each other about 10.5% of the time. That’s a 90% error rate. So if your “event for millennials” didn’t land, now you know why. There’s a better approach, and it starts with understanding shared human values instead of assumed generational traits.

Read More: Multigenerational Magic: Engaging Diverse Audiences at Events

Three Values That Matter Most to Event Attendees

For this article, we chose three values that appeared consistently across all segments in our study. Age didn’t matter. Industry didn’t matter. Geography didn’t matter. These values were universal, and they should inform every decision you make, from programming to post-event surveys.

1. Employment Security

Your attendees want to feel like their career is on solid ground, and that attending your event reinforces that stability.  Find a way to give them more of that.

What this looks like: Offer upskilling workshops, not just motivational talks. Host practical sessions like LinkedIn optimization labs, portfolio reviews or panels on emerging industry trends. Make it easy to network with decision-makers. Help attendees see your event as career insurance, and they’ll show up ready to engage.

2. Personal Responsibility

These are people who don’t want to sit and listen. They want to get things done.

What this looks like: Design breakout sessions that produce tangible outcomes: templates, action plans, first drafts. Add “Get It Done Hours” where attendees can actually complete tasks instead of collecting more homework. Stop positioning your event as a learning experience. Position it as a doing experience.

3. Community

Attendees aren’t looking for mass networking events. They’re looking for smaller, more meaningful connections within the larger crowd.

Read More: Community Takes Center Stage at PodFest

What this looks like: Create micro-communities based on shared interests, roles or goals. Morning runners. Parent meetups. First-timers. Use your app to facilitate opt-in affinity groups. The language you use matters too, so for example, talk about belonging, not attendance. Find a way to include rituals that reinforce community, not just transactions.

What Happens When You Get This Right

The data on values-driven event design is pretty clear. Engagement increases by up to 40% when your event reflects your audience’s values. Trust goes up by 20% when attendees feel seen and understood. And attendees are willing to pay up to 12% more for experiences that align with what they care about most.

We also see a sharp increase in repeat attendance when events reflect these three values. Because when people feel that your event aligns with what matters most to them, they come back. And they tell other people to go too.

This article highlights the key points, but the full study goes much deeper. If you’re trying to future-proof your event strategy, the big insight is this: you don’t need to guess what your attendees want anymore. The data exists. And when you plan with values in mind rather than demographics, you unlock connection, loyalty and impact that traditional approaches can’t match.

There’s a more in-depth look at The Event Attendees study, and many other research-backed resources about how values can help you Change What Happens Next at: davidallisoninc.online/resources

Values are the answer. Let’s put them to work.

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David Allison is a keynote speaker, author and CEO of a research firm. His interviews are based on the results of the Values Identifier, a product of Valuegraphics.