Is the fear of artificial intelligence (AI) the beginning of wisdom? Let me quickly share a simple analogy to show that AI will not replace event planners; it will replace planners who don’t use AI in Nigeria.
Imagine two event managers in Lagos, Nigeria’s metropolitan city, with an estimated 1000-1500 events happening every week, bidding for the same corporate event. Event manager A uses AI to prepare a fast, data-driven proposal, shows clear budget scenarios, and shares a short AI-made video to sell the concept. Event manager B writes a long manual proposal, takes days to send a budget, and relies on past event management assumptions. The client decides to choose Planner A based on what is seen and what meets their objectives. This simple scene tells a clear truth: AI will not take away all event jobs in Nigeria, but it will help planners who use it win work over those who do not.
To fully understand these ideas, it’s important to explore what AI can and cannot do in the event management process. This examination will clarify why event managers who possess the necessary AI skills may excel over those who do not.
1. What AI Cannot Do in the Events Management Processes
AI cannot do the humanistic relationship expressions.
There are basic humanistic skills required for a complete event management process. These are attitude, skills, and social etiquette that must be demonstrated by the event manager. You may have the best event concept, but if it is not backed up with the correct human relationship expressions, nobody would associate with your brand.
AI cannot lead creative vision from scratch without appropriate direction from humans.
Critical creativity prowess still belongs to the event planners. It is an innate skill you have discovered over the years; it cannot be replaced by AI. AI still needs the prompt and data prepared by humans, which will enable them to learn a pattern and then use the same to produce an output. It means that originality belongs to you, so you must keep it jealously.
AI cannot replace human judgment during crises and sudden happenings.
Crisis management is a critical skill or acumen that an event professional must possess. It is needed to judge and make immediate decisions when the unexpected happens in real time. AI may be able to forecast but will never help to decide in real time what people need to do when there is a disappointment from the guest speaker or a technical glitch during the event.
Now that we have considered what AI cannot do, let’s also examine what AI can do so we can enlarge our understanding more.
2. What AI Can Do in the Events Management Process.
Here we consider the possibilities with AI in the event management systems. Event management professionals with the ability to use AI to accomplish these possibilities will dominate the ecosystem for a long time.
AI can automate routine tasks, registration, invoices, and reminders.
There are basic tasks that are undertaken almost all the time by event professionals; they include writing briefs and reports, scheduling meetings, training staff, managing financials, providing invoices and receipts, generating reminders, and many others. The good news is that AI can now do this for you. You don’t need to manually set these routines anymore. With these capabilities, you have an edge over others who do not, because you are able to generate these outputs in no time at all. Ultimately it helps you manage your time and resources efficiently and makes you concentrate on your core duties.
AI can analyse data and trends and advertising performance.
It’s important to note that AI is only powerful and more useful when it is fed or trained with the right amount and the right type of data; in other words, AI needs data to breathe. Artificial intelligence will help you to automatically systematise those tasks that you will no longer need to manually carry out. There are AI software programs out there that can help you make these things happen.
AI is also a powerful tool for forecasting or learning trends. Trend analysis is now a very critical feature in event management. There are several advantages it provides. It helps event managers to make informed decisions because the event manager has the necessary information to form their decision from the data that is provided by Artificial intelligence.
Furthermore, trend analysis can help you identify the strengths and weaknesses in your event management processes so you can adjust any decisions you had made before that were not accurate. Similarly, AI can help your advertising efforts to be more efficient. It can assist you to design and create advertising content as well as the strategy you need to meet your kinds of audiences. It will also help to track and analyse advertising results.
AI can speed up the generation of event management content.
One major advantage of the integration of Artificial intelligence in event management processes is the timely generation of content that can be used for event promotion, advertising, social media posts, the creation of designs and mock-ups, and various kinds of reports and analysis. The event content that typically takes days to produce can now be created in minutes, or even seconds. There are both free and paid AI tools available, including ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok, and Claude. These generative AI tools are assisting event professionals in managing their event processes more efficiently.
What You Need to Do Now
The right question for any serious Nigerian event planner to ask at this time is ‘What do I do now?’ AI has come to stay, and what that means is that it is determining the future of many industries in Nigeria, and the event industry is not left out. Statista.com has the record that the adoption of Artificial intelligence in Nigeria has climbed significantly. Other reports say that over 83 per cent of marketing and event-centred professionals use AI-powered tools in their daily workflows. Although there are issues such as cultural, privacy, and use of data, they are teething issues that may soon be resolved.
However, event professionals that don’t want to lose their edge will go for knowledge and skill. Search for and discover the AI solutions that sync with your core area of expertise in the industry. Learn them and get the right AL skill training. It is an investment that is worth the time and the money. Not all AI solutions will be of help to you for now. Choose the most useful to you, and then you may scale afterwards.
In conclusion, Artificial intelligence is a powerful tool, but it cannot replace the humanistic aspects of event planning or management. Skills and attitudes such as empathy, trust, and relationship building. negotiating and understanding. However, the future of event management belongs to those who will be able to combine their humanistic prowess and AI tools to efficiently
