Revenue Diversification

Inside a VIP Experience

June 12, 2026 By Mark Athitakis
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Associations looking for revenue and engagement should experiment more with bespoke experiences, planners say. Just don’t lose a sense of belonging. 

Front-row seats. Backstage passes. VIP meet-and-greets. Today, association meetings can operate a lot like a stop on a pop star’s arena tour—filled with premium experiences that give attendees a feeling of white-glove treatment and provide the association with additional revenue. 

Interest in those experiences is particularly acute thanks to rising costs for nearly every element of an event. “Margins are getting tighter again because everything costs more,” says Rich Vallaster, CEM, QAS, AAiP, senior director of industry strategy at Momentive Software. “When I look at some of the VIP concepts and different tiered levels, I’m excited because it’s the same kind of creativity we see more with corporate and for-profit organizers and events. Everybody wants a customized experience.” 

One benefit of such premium experiences is that they can be delivered at relatively low cost. “I’ve seen things like being able to sit in the front of the room or being the first to enter a general session so you get to pick your seat,” says Beth Surmont, FASAE, CMP-Fellow, CAE, VP of event strategy and design at 360 Live Media. “Sometimes it involves a meet-and-greet with the speaker, or you maybe get your photo taken, or the speaker will do a special Q&A session.” 

Pile on too many elite and exclusive activities, and attendees might understandably feel that the association has drifted from its mission of cultivating a sense of belonging.

But an elite experience doesn’t have to be limited to one that appeals to high spenders, as the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) has learned. In recent years, it’s worked to develop experiences for its emerging professionals as a way to make their annual conference more attractive as they grow in the industry. “We see student members as professionals five years in the future,” says Daniel Martin, managing director of development at ASLA. “So we created a reception just for them, created an entire non-exhibit space on the tradeshow floor, and a theater where student award winners can present their projects.” 

That approach speaks to one challenge association meeting planners face when they’re designing their programming: Pile on too many elite and exclusive activities, and attendees might understandably feel that the association has drifted from its mission of cultivating a sense of belonging. Exclusive experiences, by definition, mean people will feel left out. 

“You have to balance it against people asking, ‘Aren’t we as associations inclusive communities?’” Vallaster says. “Wait a minute, why does this part of the community not get to do this part?” 

High-Ticket, Budget-Minded 

That challenge has been top –of mind for many potential attendees for associations’ executive-only experiences. Holly Amatangelo, chief learning officer at the Legal Marketing Association, notes that many are shying away from big-ticket exclusive conferences, out of concern for the optics and because they’re mindful of their own budgets. 

“They’re saying, ‘I can only get so many days out of the office, I only have so many days in my budget,’” she says. “They still report to the managing partners of their firms, and asking them to get out of the office for an additional week or even three days is difficult.” 

LMA’s response was to weave the exclusive experience for chief marketing officers into the main conference. The LMA CMO Experience” featured exclusive learning sessions, dedicated meetups for CMOs broken out by firm size, and CMO-only sponsorship opportunities. And because attendees were still able to engage with the rest of the conference, sponsors and exhibitors weren’t left feeling like decision makers were absent from the tradeshow floor. After a successful early pilot, this year’s version sold out six weeks before the conference.  

The LMA CMO Experience was rooted in a lot of member surveys, which uncovered that what that attendee group wanted wasn’t so much glitzy elite opportunities as much as focused peer learning. “The easy route would have been, ‘Let’s create a conference that’s just for C-suite members, let’s hold it at a fancy hotel, they’ll all come and pay lots of money,’” Amatangelo says. “We did both qualitative and quantitative research that was pretty extensive, asking very specific questions to get an idea of not only of what they need, but what we were not giving them.” 

Bespoke education can be an easier sell to attendees than bespoke experience, says Vallaster, especially if they have to persuade an employer to release travel funds. “Pre-event workshops or master classes are easier to justify,” he says. “You can tell the boss, ‘Here’s the normal education program, and I’m paying extra because I’m going to get to go to this master class or the keynote speaker is going to give a 45-minute interactive roundtable afterwards.’” 

Francesca Malin, event services director at the American Association of Matrimonial Lawyers (AAML), has had success with this concept by providing specialized education. It’s created some exclusivity around fellows-only trainings, where non-members need a code from a member to attend. “It’s a way to build our pipeline of getting more fellows because they’ve got a taste of the experience,” she says. “They feel, ‘If I’m part of AAML, I have to be part of this because I want to be seen as a top lawyer.’” 

Mark Athitakis
Mark Athitakis

Mark Athitakis, a contributing editor for Associations Now, has written on nonprofits, the arts, and leadership for a variety of publications. He is a coauthor of The Dumbest Moments in Business History and hopes you never qualify for the sequel.