This week sees the resumption of two in-person events that would have previously been firm dates in many property calendars. Property Week’s RESI convention returns to the Celtic Manor resort in Wales while MIPIM – the grandaddy of all real estate shindigs – edges back with a two-day meet-up in Cannes.

Although catering to very different audiences, both events take place between September 7th and 9th so should be a good litmus test for how willing the industry is to get out and about.

MIPIM is expecting around 5,000 delegates– coincidentally about the same number they got for the inaugural show in 1989 – while Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, Robert Jenrick, will be among those travelling to Newport for RESI.

The future for MIPIM is particularly intriguing. Across more than three decades, the show had become one of the first items on hundreds on the business development budgets of property companies, consultants and the sector’s long tail of product sellers.

Nothing about the show was ever described as economical: Cannes doesn’t ‘do cheap’ and a delegate pass into the exhibition would previously set you back the best part of €2,000. More recently, the show’s legendary amount of corporate hospitality had come under scrutiny following the ‘President’s Club’ debacle of 2018. There was also the – actually incorrect – perception that it had become more of a ‘jolly’ than a place to do business. The truth about MIPIM was always that if you wanted to park yourself in a Croisette watering hole in a rosé-induced haze you could, but a serious amount of dealmaking was always being done around you.

Now, MIPIM event will have to find a way back into those BD budgets and also consider its credentials in a much more ESG-conscious world. A business’s carbon footprint in just getting to the event is an obvious starting point to ponder, and also the myriad of exhibition stands – some of which are re-used but many of which are not – will have to be addressed as we journey towards a net-zero world.

For the present, Reed Midem’s MAPIC – the retail property ‘sister’ show to MIPIM – will also be back in Cannes at the end of November. Meanwhile, another fixture in the property calendar, the altogether more sedate Expo-Real will take place again in Munich next month.

So, throughout this Autumn, as property businesses of all types are preparing their business development strategies for next year, they will be able to start taking an informed view of what events make it back on the budget – and which do not.