Event industry leaders are calling on operators and agencies to stop underselling the sector to young people — and to start promoting it as a place to build a career rather than simply take a job.

The warning came amid growing concern that the events and hospitality workforce pipeline is thinning. Speakers and figures across the sector argued that the industry routinely presents itself to school leavers and graduates as short-term, stopgap work, when in reality it offers progression from entry-level roles into senior operational, creative and commercial positions.

"We're underselling the industry to young people," one event leader put it bluntly, in comments reported by Event Industry News. The message to peers was direct: if the sector continues to describe itself in modest terms, it will keep losing promising candidates to industries that market their career ladders more aggressively.

The call to action centers on how the industry communicates. Leaders urged agencies, venues, suppliers and industry bodies to invest in outreach that shows the concrete reality of event careers — the scale of budgets managed, the complexity of logistics delivered, and the range of disciplines involved, from production and technical operations to sales, marketing and account management.

They also pressed employers to be more visible in the places young people actually look for career information: schools, colleges, universities and digital platforms. Passive recruitment — waiting for applicants to find the industry — was framed as no longer viable given the competitive labor market.

The argument carries weight because the events sector depends heavily on early-career talent. Entry-level roles in event coordination, production assistance and venue operations have traditionally served as the feeder channel for the industry's future leaders. If young people never enter that channel because they do not see a future in it, the staffing problem compounds at every level of the hierarchy.

Industry figures suggested the fix is largely one of framing and storytelling. Campaigns, awards programs and mentorship initiatives already exist within the sector; the task, they argued, is to direct that energy outward, toward audiences who have never considered events as a profession, rather than circulating success stories only among those already working in the field.

The discussion also touched on retention. Promoting career potential only works if employers can back the message with genuine development pathways — training, progression routes and visible examples of people who have risen through the ranks. Leaders indicated that recruitment promises without internal structures to support them would quickly ring hollow.

For agencies and venue operators, the implication is practical: workforce planning needs to treat outreach to young audiences as a strategic investment, not a marketing afterthought. The leaders making the case believe the sector has a strong story to tell — the question is whether the industry will commit the resources to tell it at scale to the next generation of workers.