In 2025, international travel to the United States has seen a significant decline. According to the U.S. National Travel and Tourism Office, in March alone, overseas visits to the U.S. fell by 11.6% compared to the same month in 2024. The drop is even steeper in some regions, with travel bookings from Canada declining more than 70% year over year, and European inbound tourism falling 17% amid an increasing number of travel advisories, growing geopolitical tensions and visa restrictions.

For organizations that rely on global events, this drop in international visitors doesn’t just reduce attendance—it disrupts outcomes. These events represent major investments by organizations because they’re where relationships are deepened, products are launched, and market momentum is built. When fewer international attendees show up, you don’t just lose reach. You lose relevance.

We’ve been here before…sort of

The pandemic created similar problems for organizations, and companies quickly pivoted to virtual to at least keep content flowing. And while that helped, we discovered that virtual events often lacked energy. Viewers multitasked. The content delivery was often boring and not visually pleasing. Environmental distractions got in the way. We were still providing the content, but the human connection suffered. Most event marketers learned that it’s hard to create real engagement in virtual environments, with nearly 50% reporting that audience engagement is now their top challenge.

It IS hard - but it’s not impossible. In fact, it’s a golden opportunity. Once again, organizations are faced with a familiar challenge:  how to foster connection with audiences who can’t—or won’t—attend in person. But we now know that it’s not just about plugging in a livestream or posting a keynote on YouTube. It’s about building intentional, interactive, human-centered experiences that truly engage people—wherever they are.

The cost of ignoring your virtual audience

When international attendees feel like an afterthought, they behave accordingly. They disengage, and they stop showing up. If you fail to engage your virtual audience, the impacts can be significant and long-lasting, and they can be felt throughout the organization in areas such as:

• Customer Loyalty: Events are one of the few opportunities for high-touch, emotionally resonant brand interactions. Without that, churn goes up and long-term relationships can suffer.
• Global Growth: International prospects and partners often meet your brand for the first time through event content. A weak or inaccessible virtual experience can mean missed opportunities in key markets.
• Product Adoption: Many virtual viewers are existing users or partners. If they don’t engage with your training sessions, product demos, or roadmaps—they don’t stay up to speed. And that has downstream impact on renewals and upsells.
• Employee Engagement: For internal audiences--especially global teams at SKOs or summits, poor virtual execution reinforces silos. It reduces morale and leaves remote employees feeling like an afterthought.

It’s not about replacing the in-person experience. It’s about strategy.

This is about rethinking the strategy behind your events. We live in a hybrid world where events are no longer limited to the confines of space and time. They are evergreen, multi-form, multi-dimensional and global by default. To succeed, you need to design experiences that don’t compromise connection, whether they’re happening in the room or on the screen.

It starts with strategy. To design an event that connects with attendees in any format, you need to shift from a logistics-first mindset to a connection-first strategy. You begin with the fundamental question: what kinds of connections do we want to create with our event? Is it deepening customer loyalty, enabling learning, sparking interest in a new product offering, or aligning teams around a unified message?

Once you’ve identified the connections that matter most, you can begin mapping out the most important engagement points – a powerful keynote reveal, an expert panel discussion, or even an expo floor conversation – and design those moments with intentionality across both in-person and virtual formats.

This is the key to your strategy. You are not just translating physical to digital, but designing for both from the beginning, and placing connection at the center. Real strategy accounts for audience behaviors, content priorities, engagement preferences, and in the case of your international audiences, time zones.

It doesn’t look like disruption is going away anytime soon. For organizations that embrace this opportunity and master the shift to a connection-first strategy, the payoff can result in a more inclusive, more resilient and more globally connected brand.

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About TPN

TPN exists to create spaces and reasons for humans to connect. We are masters in putting people at the center of every experience we design. For over 30 years, we have been producing memorable event experiences that are designed to amplify creativity, foster connection, and empower collaboration.

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