The Future Hospitality Summit (FHS) is one of the most influential conference series in the hospitality sector that focuses on bringing industry expertise together to shape the future of tourism. Organized by an event management company called The Bench, the series’ main highlight is FHS World, which recently celebrated its 20th anniversary in October. According to their website, “60+ countries and delegates from over 650 companies” attended throughout the event along with 100+ sponsors and partners.
As FHS continues to grow in scale and influence, fostering real-time engagement and capturing attendee moments across social platforms has become increasingly important. However, considering FHS’s extensive reach among global thought leaders, hospitality professionals, and investors, it can be quite difficult to harness all this energy in one place. As a result, The Bench utilized Walls.io‘s social walls as a solution.
To learn more about their experience with Walls.io, we spoke with Muhammad Ahmed, Senior Product Marketing & Analytics Manager at the bench. This year, Ahmed and his team have displayed a social wall on the big screens of two of their main events: FHS Saudi Arabia and FHS World 2025.
“The reaction [to the wall] was really positive. Attendees would pause to see if their posts appeared, and it created natural conversation starters during breaks.”
The Interview
You’ve set up 2 social walls for events this year. What challenges prompted you to look for a solution like Walls.io?
We were struggling to capture and showcase the conversations happening across different platforms during our events. With delegates posting on LinkedIn, Instagram, and X using various hashtags, we needed a centralized way to aggregate all this content in real-time. The moderation aspect was crucial too, displaying live social content at a high-profile investment summit meant we needed confidence that everything showing up on our screens was appropriate.
What was your experience with setting up the social wall before the event and moderating it during the live days?
Setup was surprisingly straightforward. We configured our event hashtags, added sponsor social accounts and customized the branding to match each event’s identity.
The AI moderation tools gave us peace of mind and we had multiple team members with moderator access so we could manage content throughout the day. During the event, moderating was seamless. Posts appeared instantly and we could quickly approve or hide content as needed. It became part of our event flow rather than an additional task to manage.
Your wall had a diverse array of content that came not only from your channels, but attendee social media profiles and sponsors as well. How did you manage to encourage people to use your event hashtag?
We promoted the hashtag everywhere – on signage around the venue, in the event app, during opening remarks, and most importantly on the screens displaying the social wall itself.
Seeing their posts appear in real-time on the big screens was the biggest motivator. For FHS Saudi Arabia and FHS World, many of our speakers and exhibitors naturally wanted that visibility, so they actively used the hashtag throughout the event.
Below are examples of attendees using the event’s hashtags which were then displayed on the social wall.
How was the social wall showcased at the venue, and what reactions or feedback did you observe from attendees?
We displayed the social walls on large screens in high-traffic areas: registration zones, networking lounges and near the exhibition floor. The reaction was really positive. Attendees would pause to see if their posts appeared, and it created natural conversation starters during breaks.
Wrapping it up
Hosting thousands of people per year, the FHS conference series requires a strong tool to aggregate all their relevant social media sources and powerful moderation capabilities to ensure the wall remains professional. The social wall provided by Walls.io helped transform individual posts into part of a larger narrative that reflects the expertise of the community. For The Bench, the social wall contributed to a more engaged event experience; while for delegates, speakers, and sponsors, it offered a unique opportunity to plug their services, share perspectives, and increase their visibility among peers.