Every July, the familiar migration begins. Investors head to Sun Valley. The Hamptons is packed with founders and executives. A private dinner will be held in place of the Zoom call. Our meeting schedules are jam-packed, and we dive into walks on the beach, tennis matches, backyard conversations, and more. At the same time that artificial intelligence is generating vast amounts of email, marketing messages, and content, allowing us to communicate and transact with audiences wherever they are, the world’s most influential business leaders still choose to be in the same place at the same time.
As technology exponentially increases the amount of communication generated and received, the economic value of physical proximity is becoming more, not less. The easier it is to exchange information digitally, the more valuable it becomes to share experiences that cannot yet be replicated through technology, such as gaining trust, building beliefs, and building relationships that support consequential decision-making. Scarcity is access.
For years, we thought technology would definitely replace business travel. Just as emails replaced letters, AI now handles tasks that once required teams of analysts, researchers, and coordinators. Business will therefore become increasingly virtual. However, that prediction was only half correct.
Everyday interactions are becoming dramatically more efficient, but the most valuable interactions are becoming more focused. It’s no coincidence that even as executives debate AI infrastructure and efficiency, they continue to meet in person to negotiate partnerships, test ideas, and build the trust that ultimately determines the flow of capital. Leaders are becoming more intentional about the moments when it’s warranted to truly be together, rather than traveling for every meeting. The result is more selective travel and higher expected returns. This pattern is seen throughout My company Vendelux tracks 250,000 B2B events. Companies continue to invest heavily in conferences, executive summits, and customer gatherings because results are difficult to replicate elsewhere. The most important meetings are rarely on the published agenda. They can happen during breakfast before the keynote, during serendipitous introductions between sessions, or in conversations that continue long after the presentation ends.
These moments are successful because trust is developed differently online than in person. The most important business decisions, such as hiring a management team, selecting a strategic partner, finalizing the terms of an acquisition, and investing in a startup, involve uncertainty. No amount of information can completely eliminate risk. At some point, leaders stop evaluating just the facts and start evaluating the people behind the deal. They look for judgment, consistency, curiosity, and confidence. These qualities are difficult to assess through a screen.
Behavioral research has long shown that trust is built through repeated high-quality interactions, not single transactions. Shared experiences, casual conversations, and unstructured time generate information that won’t show up in a slide deck or follow-up email. Learn how someone thinks under pressure, how they react when challenged, and whether their actions consistently match their words.
This is one reason why elite gathering places remain important. Sun Valley isn’t worth it for a conference agenda, nor is the Hamptons for a single dinner or event. Its economic value comes from concentration. With the right people on board at the same time, months of introductions, meetings, and relationship building are reduced to days. Network effects are geographical.
This dynamic extends far beyond invitation-only gatherings. Across all industries, conferences have become one of the few environments where customers, prospects, partners, investors, and competitors all come together. While virtual events have dramatically expanded access, they have rarely replicated the serendipity that makes in-person gatherings so productive. An unscheduled conversation is better than a perfectly scheduled video call. A single implementation can change hiring decisions, dissolve partnerships, and reorient corporate strategy in ways that are difficult to predict and impossible to schedule.
The next competitive advantage will not come from choosing between digital and physical engagement. It comes from connecting the two. Businesses already have vast amounts of data about who their customers are and how they behave online. What they historically lacked is that same intelligence about where those people congregate in the physical world. As this gap narrows, events and travel become more intentional, ensuring you have the right people in the right place at the right time. Location intelligence can be just as valuable as audience intelligence.
As AI-generated content becomes ubiquitous, every email, proposal, and presentation risks sounding increasingly similar. As AI makes it easier to create and personalize outreach, the benefits shift from simply generating more communications to knowing when and where that communication is most likely to matter. In other words, the bottleneck moves from message creation to Moment creation.
Over the next decade, shared physical experiences will be at the core of every business relationship. AI will continue to reduce the cost of knowledge work, while making genuine human connections rarer and more valuable. The paradox of the AI era is that as it becomes easier to reach everyone, spending time with the right people becomes more valuable. When everyday communication becomes inherently free, trust becomes a constraint. And when trust is in short supply, its value increases.
As a new season of Hamptons unfolds, it’s tempting to dismiss these gatherings as networking rituals and executive traditions, dismissing them as more important conversations taking place beneath the surface. What looks like social activity is often economic infrastructure. These gatherings reveal immutable truths about how business works. Technology can change how information moves, but it cannot change how trust is built.
