The Impact of Sharing Economy on Events

The Sharing Economy is a socio-economic ecosystem with the goal to maximize economy efficiency and resource utilization. It includes creation sharing, distribution, and production of commodity and services by different people or companies, such as Airbnb and Uber, the applications to provide private accommodation or rides services through the Internet, which are the two most frequently used ‘sharing economies’ in our daily life. And today, more and more event-related services like Liquidspace are emerging. There is no doubt that technology has changed every aspect of the event industry.

Concerning the positive impact on event, the more effective and efficient utilization of available resources are the main one. These services are all about linking people who have surplus goods to those who can make use of them. Such as Showslice, they provide a platform for organizers of sizeable events to use the existing services more efficiently and save more money. In the smart phone age, these services seem like a nature trend in the world: wider connectivity of the Internet and lower cost transaction.

Moreover, the increasing lower event budget has attracted many smaller events. Compare to the past, more and more convenient and efficient services have greatly assisted the planning, production, execution, and follow-through in events. If we need some Service Traiteur, just download an app like TaskRabbit.

It also creates economic opportunities for the people who provide services. This kind of advantage is more like a chain reaction, more and more events are being held with growth job opportunities like rental of premises, event Companies’ turnover etc. will be increased.

However, this sharing economy trend also brings negative influence on event industry. Firstly, the sharing knowledge have led some threats to events. With the acceleration of Internet, there have been a great number of online conferences content according people’s requests and social trend on some of the video platforms. Forturnately, this kind of conferences are still under development, but this must would be a big shock to the actual conferences in the future. In addition, there are still many a payable educatinal websides for the event planners, but as the source of the knowledge is unknown, which is difficult to guarantee the quality or may lead misleading.

Secondly, share economy has impacted the conventianal rules. Traditionally, event or event service company must get the licenses from the government and pay the tax every month, however, for the sharing economy suppliers, as most of them are individuals whose identities are unknow, it is hard to address the tax and liscensing rules on them which are unfair to the traditional event or event service companies. Additionally, it is difficult to ensure the unkown supplies is liable or not, which may probably bring safefy problems or uncertainty insolvability.

In conclusion, with the development of sharing economy, not only does it diversify people’s earning ways, but also has brought many a convenience to the event industry like more services choices, making use of the surplus goods in order to save more money etc. Nevertheless, where there is  an opportunity, there is a threat, facing the online conference content’s shock, traditional event companies could start to creat the virtual value to their customers like online educational forum etc. What’s more, for the sake of sharing economy’s promising future, in my opinion, government ought to set up some specific rules to trackle the tax and liscensing rules to regulate suppliers’ behavior and products or services’ quality.

Pulin CHEN
Huishan LI

Sources:
http://www.thepeoplewhoshare.com/blog/what-is-the-sharing-economy/
http://www.bizbash.com/the-evolution-of-event-technology-what-has-changed-since-2000/new-york/story/30253#.VqPv6Eu6T1o
http://www.eventmanagerblog.com/sharing-economy
http://www.eventmanagerblog.com/sharing-economy-events