AI Tools for Event Planners

By: Tina Martinez, Vice President of Design and Development

Don’t you wish there were more hours in the day? Yeah, we do too. In the busy world of destination management and event planning, there’s always more to do than time allows. Enter AI—our new best friend in getting things done. AI tools for event planners are like your personal sidekicks, handling the nitty-gritty tasks like transcribing meeting notes, collecting action items, and digging into research, so you can focus on what you do best—creating amazing experiences! In this article, we’ve summarized some of our favorite tools at 360 Destination Group.

Hire AI as Your Secretary

Wave is an AI tool that’s making waves (pun intended!) in the way meetings can be managed. It has the potential to revolutionize how meeting follow-ups are handled by automatically generating summaries, calling out key action items, and keeping everyone on the same page—without the need for anyone to scribble down notes. This tool enables your team to be engaged in conversations with clients (and internally!) and ask thoughtful questions that will yield better ideas. Below is a snapshot of its AI wizardry:

Pretty cool, right? More good news: many of the tools you already use have features like this (like Zoom AI Companion). There are plenty of other AI-powered tools you can easily integrate into your existing meeting systems, such as Otter.ai and Read.ai.

Another handy organizational trick is using ChatGPT to help you restructure and make sense of information. With AI tools for event planners, you can quickly turn survey results into action items or even a SWOT analysis. Not needing to sift through hundreds of survey results to glean any helpful next steps? Now that’s a win!

This one is for the leaders! Have you ever needed to create a training guide or document an existing process for a new employee? It tends to take a lot of screenshots and a whole lot of time. Well, not anymore! With Scribe, you can install the browser extension (for free!) and tap record. Then, your AI buddy will take screenshots of what you’re doing and create a PDF with every step. This is great for Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)! See a sneak peek below.

AI Tools for Event Planners: Your New Creative Co-Pilot

AI for Brainstorming

Now, don’t get it twisted: brainstorming sessions are a lot of fun. But, it can be hard to get people into a physical or virtual room to get the creative juices flowing. Plus, if you’re working remotely, you can feel like you’re on an island. Consider AI your life raft! We at 360DG love using ChatGPT to help us brainstorm program itineraries and do some essential research that we can then refine and present to our clients. Here’s an example of AI in action:

Take Photos from Low-Res to High Impact

Sometimes, hiring a professional photographer for an event isn’t in the budget. But, we all know the struggle of taking mobile photos in low light or with an older device. When images are sent via email or placed in documents, they also lose a lot of resolution. Bid those pixelated photos goodbye with Upscale Pics! Now, you can take small or low-resolution photos and make them bigger and better than before.

Empower Your Next Powerpoint

No matter what presentation software you use, you want it to wow! However, it’s often hard to find just the right slide, graphic, or animation to really take things to the next level. This is where beautiful.ai slides in to become your next deck’s MVP. With hundreds of gorgeous templates to choose from and a lot of AI magic to assist you in resizing images and text, making pixel-perfect presentations has never been easier.

Using Canva AI for Design and Decor

This is one of my personal favorites! I love this AI-powered tool so much that I hosted a training session for the entire Design and Development team. Canva has changed our lives, and we can now create professional-looking, custom-designed concepts for our clients without complicated and expensive software. Here are a few of our favorite ways to use Canva to bring our ideas to life with a few clicks of a mouse.

Canva has many AI features, but one of my favorites is the Magic Media AI generator. Instead of scrolling through stock photo sites to find an image that works, you can create exactly what you want! You can also take things to the next level by removing backgrounds, blurring parts of a photo (with the Blur effect), erasing specific elements you don’t want, and even swapping out elements with the Magic Edit tool! Yeah, it’s beyond cool.

Take Your Visuals on a Creative Journey

MidJourney is one of the coolest new AI platforms on the market. You can describe the type of image you’re looking for and it will generate it. But, you can also upload an existing image and tweak it. For instance, if you want to showcase what a space could look like for your client’s next cocktail hour, you can tell the program to alter a space or add a wall, divider, foliage, whatever you can think of. With this tool, the limit really is only your imagination!

Keep Your AI in Check

While AI tools are incredibly useful, they’re not without their quirks. These tools can sometimes miss the mark—whether it’s misunderstanding context, getting creative with facts, or just not quite hitting the right tone. That’s why it’s essential to review and edit everything AI produces. Ensure that the content aligns with your brand’s voice, maintains factual accuracy, and truly reflects your message. Think of AI as your helpful assistant, not a final decision-maker. With the right oversight, you can turn AI’s first draft into polished, on-brand content that shines.

There you have it! I hope you’ve enjoyed exploring a few ways AI can add more time back to your day. Looking for more ideas? Reach out, and we can take a tour through some of the tools that can help you work smarter, not harder!