Mementus Technologies software is widely used by convention centres and other large-scale venues. Of the hundreds of venue professionals surveyed for the report during Q1 2026, the largest cohort came from convention centres. Respondents came from 20 countries across North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific.
The survey identified a major gap between the recognition of AI’s potential and implementation of that potential in venues, with 64 per cent of those surveyed believing AI would have a considerable impact in venue and event management but only seven per cent of respondents having actually begun deploying AI solutions.
While just two per cent were at the most advanced stage of scaling AI use in their venues, the largest subsection – 35 per cent – were interested in specific use cases, 12 per cent were not adopting AI and 31 per cent were undertaking early stage exploration of the AI landscape. The remaining 16 per cent were actively evaluating solutions.
The rest of the survey and report unpacked the variety of challenges to realising the potential of AI in venue and event management – from concerns around privacy and trust to the inability of AI, at this stage, to understand the venue domain or to handle a live event environment.
Sixty-two per cent of respondents said security and data privacy was a concern, while concern around trusting decisions made by AI ranked next – selected by 57 per cent – and integration into workflows and change management were equal third as concerns around AI adoption, cited by 46 per cent of those surveyed.
The survey results and the report show that venues are dipping the proverbial toe in the waters of AI – going first for the parts of the business to which AI can most easily be applied, rather than the areas venues are most keen to have AI contribute to.
Seventy-five per cent of respondents identified data entry and admin as the top priority for applying AI, followed by operational insights, however handling manual coordination across teams was the most selected area in which venue professionals actually want AI to shoulder the load.
In terms of the insufficiencies of AI tools, a deficit in venue-specific knowledge – chosen by 52 per cent of respondents – and a lack of real-time operational awareness – chosen by 48 per cent – along with being able to turn data into actionable insights – were the top three issues selected by the senior venue staff surveyed.
However, 55 per cent of respondents also acknowledged that their venues had limited operational data – essential for the implementation of AI solutions that will work as intended.
The survey also sought to understand how much the venue industry wants to give over control of management to AI.
The significant majority – 66 per cent – say they want to keep operations primarily human-led, with AI support, while 18 per cent would like to see an equal balance between humans and AI and 10 per cent wants tech-led operations with human oversight. Just five per cent said they would like to minimise technology in venue operations.
