The Experience Economy Meeting (TEM) was held on 6 and 7 November in Madrid. It brought delegates from the touring exhibition and cultural sectors together to network. They also learned about everything from tax law to erotic immersive experiences and everything in between.
Hosted by Fever, Exhibition Hub and Semmel Exhibitions, with Imagine Exhibitions as special presenting sponsor, the popular event returned for the first time since the pandemic.
The venue was ABC Serrano in Madrid and the event was superbly organised by the hosts and MC’ed by the convivial Christoph Scholz, director of exhibitions and international projects at Semmel Concerts GmbH.
Immersive IS here for good
The opening panel session asked “Is immersive here for good?” and looked at the continued growth of immersive experiences.
Host and renowned concert tour promoter Serge Grimaux opened proceedings by highlighting the projected continued development of the sector. He said it was projected to grow from $5.4bn pa in 2023 to $30bn in 2030.
“This [immersive] business will continue to grow. We all want great stories and unforgettable moments at a good price.”
Swedish pornographic film director, screenwriter and producer Erika Lust talked about her new immersive experience. This is House of Erika Lust in Barcelona.
With twenty years experience making films, she had wondered, “What could happen if we tried to bring erotica into the world of immersive?”
The resulting immersive experience, “where fantasy meets reality, and every sensation is yours to explore” is, as Lust desribes it, “a universe of self-discovery”.
House of Erika Lust, created in partnership with augmented reality content creation studio Layers of Reality, utilises the latest technologies, including VR headsets to immerse visitors in the world of Lust’s films.
The experience is based on fantasies sent into Lust by women. For the VR, the visitor is offered three options: “erotic”, fully explicit” and “surprise me”. She didn’t elaborate on what the surprise might be.
A digital art museum for Hamburg
Serial entrepreneur and technology investor Lars Hinrichs, CEO of The UBS Digital Arts Museum in Germany spoke about the 6,500 sqm space.
Set to open in Q1 2026, he hopes the museum that he initiated and substantially financed will help his native Hamburg become a centre of digital art.
“Digital art so easy to change,” he said, “so the art will evolve and always have something new.”
His inspiration was a visit to TeamLab in Tokyo. “Everyone who came out of the museum came out with a smile. I’d never seen that before. TeamLab really touches the senses.”
The Japanese art collective TeamLab has been creating ground breaking digital and immersive art experiences for over two decades. It has had exhibtions across the world, from Helsinkito Singapore and new exhibits are set to open in Jeddah and Abu Dhabi.
TeamLab Borderless recently reopened in Tokyo, “a world of artworks without boundaries, a museum without a map”.
Blooloop’s Charles Read pointed out that the discussion was taking place the same week as Sotheby’s in New York had its dedicated auction of digital art. Ai-Da Robot‘s Alan Turing painting made history as the first work sold by humanoid robot, selling for $1.3m, over ten times its asking price.
Meow Wolf and TeamLab have shown that immersive experiences have the power to attract visitors who might not usually visit art galleries. Eric Albert, PHI Group CEO said that,”A lot of people might perceive contemporary art as inaccessible. However, we see the immersive experience as a doorway. 87% [of our visitors] are a completely new audience that we wouldn’t be reaching if we didn’t do these new experiences.”
Marketing and attention
One session at the Experience Economy Meeting focused on marketing, “The Art of Hype”. The hosts were Fever’s Jessica Bush and Finn Regenhold of Semmel Exhibtions.
James Cassidy, president of FKP Scorpip Entertainment said that, “hype is an overused word”. He acknowledged that data had its place. However, he added, there are, “so many metrics and data you can’t see the wood for the trees these days. Be cautious to differentiate what’s real and what’s fake”
“At the end of the day if you have a good product and messaging you will be able to cut through.”
Teba Lorenzo from Tik Tok suggested that, “attention is now the most important KPI” although she said it was of course, hard to measure.
She said that it was not so much about influencers than niches and micro communities. However, she said that, “you have to be careful to consider how they align with your brand values”.
“Today, users, brand and creators sit at the table at the same level” she said.
Ugo Ceria, Meta’s head of creative shop in Southern Europe identified other trends. These included wearable AR glasses technology and AI, particularly for language and cultural translations.
Withholding tax – don’t get taxed twice!
Hosted by Debbie Donohue, COO & VP of sales at Imagine, and Tania Esparza, VP of legal GRC and policy at Fever, this was a really practical session on Withholding Tax.
Specialist tax lawyers Dr Dick Molenaar, All Arts Tax Advisors, and Dr Harald Grams, Grams und Partner, presented an incredibly useful guide on how to avoid double taxation.
Simply put, if you earn income in another country there is a risk that you will be liable for corporation tax in that country AND in your home country.
However, most countries have treaties in place to avoid this, recognising that double taxation is stifles international trade.
The speakers did a great job of demystifying when tax is due. They also outlined what steps to take in different countries to make sure you are not caught out.
As Dr Molenaar said, “Bilateral tax treaties are your friends”.
The audience experience
Christoph Scholz and Susan Gloy-Kruse, lead key account management exhibitions at CTS Eventim, hosted a panel looking at the audience experience.
Panelists Adrian Hon, writer and founder of Six to Start, Julien Baron, lililillilil director, co-founder & CTO, Verónica Casas, Blanco y Negro CEO and Béchara Yared, Look2Innovate CEO, discussed immersive trends and the audience.
Casas, who has transformed the Tomorrowland Festival into a VR experience, stressed how visitors expect more these days. You need to provide not just a high quality core experience, but also additional elements, for example a bar or video booth.
“It’s necessary to pay attention in to single detail. This makes sure the [google] review on the WHOLE experience is good.”
Baron, whose latest project Imagine Paris is a ‘promenade through the City of Light’, agreed that people expect more than just say projection now, noting that you have to demonstrate value for money in a competitive market.
This can create a dilemma in marketing. You need to balance enticing visitors with actual footage with making sure that there are still unexpected elements to see when they visit.
At the end of the day though it remains true that “narrative and storytelling is the most important thing”.
The painful venue business
Serge Grimaux, and Stefanie Ziegler, COO & Brand Licensing Director of Explorado Group, chaired the Experience Economy Meeting panel focusing venues.
Hamza El Azhar, co-founder & CEO of Exhibition Hub, explained how his company prefers to invest in creating their own venues. This allows them to act faster and to get spaces that are right for them. “Being out of the centre of town can also work if the content is good. Content drives the public to a venue.”
The key attributes for a good venue were, he said, “height, a big space and not a lot of columns”.
“We take an empty space and transform it. We need to put up $1.5-2m to do it right. A lot of investment is needed to get to our standard. But at least we have the venue for 5 years.”
The NEC’s Ben Calvert said that the NEC is creating its own “black box” event space. The NEC is currently not utilised to capacity with it’s core trade show business.
It is therefore creating a blank canvas space for immersive events. This needs to be on a different model than their standard (and of course lucrative) short stay expo model.
“We see the potential’, he said. “We think we know what the space should be. But we’re in listening mode and we want to take the plunge to create a space for the market.”
Reimagining the venue experience
Marc Bruix, director of partnerships Americas & APAC at FC Barcelona, and Matt Wiener, founder & CEO Jett Capital & Jett Sports, explained how FC Barcelona’s stadium renovation will include a “district” including immersive experiences to extend entertainment beyond match days.
Bruix said the big challenge is to, “keep the venue relevant 365 days a year”.
Already the club’s museum gets more visitors than the matches. The, “overall focus remains on winning games. More visitors means more money to invest, which means we win more games”.
Wiener said that we, “need to reimagine how the venue experience can take shape to create a ‘stickiness’ which leads to returning customers.”
“If you can create a good experience in one city then your market is the entire continent.”
State of the union
The final session of the Experience Economy Meeting was hosted by Christoph Scholz, and Nicolas Renna, CEO of Proactiv Entertainment. It wrapped up proceedings with an overview of the industry.
The panellists were James Drury, special projects editor from IQ Magazine, Juancho Carrillo, senior product lead reality labs at Meta, and Dane O’Donnell, VP of sports at RWS Global.
TEM’24 proved a successful and well organised show, with great networking and lively, informative and practical sessions. After hours, delegates immersed themselves in the sights and sounds of Madrid and celebrated new friendships and connections.
