Miles Ahead Virtual Conferences—Business Travel Tech

In February 2021, after Covid-19 had basically stopped all travel and as the world was figuring out vaccine production and distribution, Deem held its first-ever branded corporate travel technology conference. That may seem like poor timing, but it was important to us to show our commitment to our industry, our faith that travel would return, and our dedication to investing in technology to make travel better for everyone when it returned.

The first Miles Ahead virtual conference launched our new corporate identity and software platform, Etta. Over the course of two days, February 23-24, we showed recorded sessions from our leadership and product teams, held live online sessions, and aired thought-provoking conversations with influential leaders both in the industry and outside of it, including Guy Kawasaki.

Miles Ahead wasn’t an entirely altruistic endeavor, however. With the shut-down of most public events in 2020, the travel industry events we relied on to build business were also cancelled. Hosting our own event afforded us the ability to introduce our new identity and product, and make up for lost or delayed opportunities from the past year. A primary goal for the event was to generate new leads and pipeline for the business.

Miles Ahead 2021 was a huge success. 6,280 industry professionals registered to attend the two-day online event. We garnered hundreds of leads and generated well more than 2x in pipeline over what we spent to produce the event.

Fast forward to the same time in 2022: Continued anxiety around the pandemic and unwillingness to attend in-person events led us to produce a second Miles Ahead virtual event. Production was harder this time around as many people were unable to attend filming dates due to illness.

But we successfully produced a second event in a shorter, one-day format and saw exciting results: We had far fewer registrants in 2022, at just 1,700, but more than doubled our leads and generated nearly a half million more in pipeline over our 2021 event, while spending about half as much in production costs from the prior year.