Samia Moore: Reinventing Hospitality Events Post-Pandemic

Samia Moore runs one of the hospitality sector's most respected event production companies, responsible for delivering industry gatherings from London to Dubai to Singapore. In this conversation, she reflects on how the events landscape has transformed since 2020 and why she believes the industry that emerged from the pandemic is more interesting, more intentional, and more commercially sophisticated than the one that entered it. Her perspective draws on fifteen years of designing flagship hospitality events and an unusually clear-eyed view of how hotel operators can better compete for high-value event business.

The pandemic forced a hard reckoning with the purpose of in-person events, Samia explains. When everything moved online, it became immediately clear which events people actually wanted to attend and which ones they had only ever gone to out of obligation or habit. The ones that survived the forced hiatus were those where the human connection — the hallway conversation, the dinner that ran until midnight, the accidental encounter that became a business partnership — was genuinely irreplaceable.

Samia discusses the production changes that have reshaped the industry. Hybrid event design is now an expectation rather than an innovation, but doing it well remains elusive. Most hybrid events still fail to give remote participants a genuine sense of participation. She shares what the best-executed models get right, and why it comes down to designing for two different audiences rather than trying to create one experience that works for both. The hotels winning events business in 2026 are those that invested in flexible infrastructure during the downturn, giving them the technical capability to execute hybrid formats that genuinely serve both in-person and remote attendees.

The conversation turns to the specific demands of hospitality industry events, gatherings where the attendees are professionals who notice every operational detail, and where the event itself becomes a demonstration of the standards its organisers hold themselves to. The pressure is qualitatively different when the audience holds themselves to luxury hotel standards. Samia has built her reputation on understanding this dynamic and delivering events where the operational excellence is invisible, the service is exceptional, and the guest experience technology works exactly as it should. The most successful hotel events she has produced are those where the property's own systems, from the guest experience platform to the F&B point of sale, were genuinely integrated into the event design rather than treated as separate infrastructure.

We close on Samia's vision for what the signature hospitality events of the next decade will look like, smaller, more curated, and more purposefully designed around the quality of conversation they are trying to generate. The transactional conference model, she argues, is losing ground to intimate, high-trust gatherings where the curation of attendees matters as much as the agenda. Hotels with strong brand identities and authentic hospitality cultures are better positioned for this future than those competing primarily on floor space and capacity. The event itself becomes an expression of the property's values, and the most memorable ones are inseparable from the places that hosted them.