Pros:

Save Money

The biggest and most obvious benefit to point out is the cost savings of attending or hosting a virtual event instead of a brick-and-mortar event.  Think about all the costs associated with trade shows or conferences offline.  You have to rent meeting space or pay a fee to put up a booth at an exhibition hall.  Your company also has to front the money for hotel costs, transportation, and other work-related expenses for all employees who are traveling to attend the event.  And then there are the additional costs associated with putting up your booth.  Now imagine being able to eliminate all of those costs.  Instead, the only cost is the money you have to front for the virtual event, which will usually run you only a few thousand dollars.  Attending a trade show in person?  That can easily run you 10 times that.

Less Time Wasted

When you travel to participate in an offline event, that’s valuable time your employees are investing in travel.  You have to pay your employees for their time during work hours, and you are wasting their time after hours.  That is all time your employees could be using to do something else.  Traveling is inconvenient.  If you can do all your business from your office (as you can with a virtual event), your employees are free to concentrate their time on other tasks.  On this same note, virtual events tend to be faster paced than those in real life since the attendees don’t have to physically move from space to space.  So you can actually end up meeting more people at online events than you could at offline events.

Easy Note Taking

When you attend an offline event, you have to come up with a way to record information, which generally comes down to taking notes on your tablet.  You don’t have to carry around these supplies or put in this effort with virtual events though.  All conversations, whether text- or voice-based, can be recorded and stored indefinitely for all participants to access at any time in the future.

Fast Planning and Set-up

Planning attendance at a trade show offline can be a complicated and challenging prospect, and may take a great deal of time and effort. Just putting up and taking down a booth can be a day’s work in itself.  With a virtual event, you can get everything set up and running in a half hour if you are attending, and if you are hosting, you will save even more time overall.  Sending out invitations is as easy as providing your attendees with a link, and you don’t have to set up accommodations or make complicated arrangements.  There’s no “take down” process afterward for your booth; you simply close up the program and you’re done.

Promote Online for Wider Outreach

You can promote an online event with ease on social media websites and on your company website.  What’s great about virtual events is no one has to travel for them, including customers, potential customers, business associates, and others who are located in distant cities or countries.  These people can all attend your trade show instantly, just as you can, without leaving their locations.  You get a wider outreach this way, and everyone gets to participate.  While the conference or trade show is in progress, attendees can continue to spread the word in their social media circles.

Cons:

Distractions

When you’re attending an event in person, there is nothing to distract you (assuming you turn your cell phone off and aren’t online on your tablet).  The office however is full of distractions, from the phone ringing to the internet being at your fingertips.  You have to find a way for attendees to virtual conferences at your office not to be distracted by these local activities.

Less Spontaneous

While the fast-paced nature of online events may help you meet more people, there is also less spontaneity in the virtual world.  When you are attending an expo event in person, it is common to just bump into random people—who then may turn out to be interested in your company or products.  These people can forge important professional connections with you.  You are far less likely to randomly meet people at a virtual event who are not present specifically to talk to you.  This can make networking more challenging.

No Business Vacation Element

Some employees view attending events in the offline world as a kind of reward.  This is because trip tends to be just that—a trip.  Even though they are required to do business on their trip, it can still be seen as a kind of vacation, one where many expenses are being paid by the company in return for attendance at a trade show or conference.  It may take a toll on employee morale if these trips are removed.  Not all employees view them as an inconvenience.  Many look forward to them all year, so you may need to find another way to reward your employees.

With INXPO’s award-winning virtual online platform you now have the ability to reach a global audience, further increasing your event ROI. Enable additional revenue opportunities by allowing access to content even after the curtains have closed, for as long as you’d like. With access to real time reporting you can track and measure the effectiveness of your events and share specific analytics with your key stakeholders including your partners, speakers, and executive sponsors.

Pros:

Save Money

The biggest and most obvious benefit to point out is the cost savings of attending or hosting a virtual event instead of a brick-and-mortar event.  Think about all the costs associated with trade shows or conferences offline.  You have to rent meeting space or pay a fee to put up a booth at an exhibition hall.  Your company also has to front the money for hotel costs, transportation, and other work-related expenses for all employees who are traveling to attend the event.  And then there are the additional costs associated with putting up your booth.  Now imagine being able to eliminate all of those costs.  Instead, the only cost is the money you have to front for the virtual event, which will usually run you only a few thousand dollars.  Attending a trade show in person?  That can easily run you 10 times that.

Less Time Wasted

When you travel to participate in an offline event, that’s valuable time your employees are investing in travel.  You have to pay your employees for their time during work hours, and you are wasting their time after hours.  That is all time your employees could be using to do something else.  Traveling is inconvenient.  If you can do all your business from your office (as you can with a virtual event), your employees are free to concentrate their time on other tasks.  On this same note, virtual events tend to be faster paced than those in real life since the attendees don’t have to physically move from space to space.  So you can actually end up meeting more people at online events than you could at offline events.

Easy Note Taking

When you attend an offline event, you have to come up with a way to record information, which generally comes down to taking notes on your tablet.  You don’t have to carry around these supplies or put in this effort with virtual events though.  All conversations, whether text- or voice-based, can be recorded and stored indefinitely for all participants to access at any time in the future.

Fast Planning and Set-up

Planning attendance at a trade show offline can be a complicated and challenging prospect, and may take a great deal of time and effort. Just putting up and taking down a booth can be a day’s work in itself.  With a virtual event, you can get everything set up and running in a half hour if you are attending, and if you are hosting, you will save even more time overall.  Sending out invitations is as easy as providing your attendees with a link, and you don’t have to set up accommodations or make complicated arrangements.  There’s no “take down” process afterward for your booth; you simply close up the program and you’re done.

Promote Online for Wider Outreach

You can promote an online event with ease on social media websites and on your company website.  What’s great about virtual events is no one has to travel for them, including customers, potential customers, business associates, and others who are located in distant cities or countries.  These people can all attend your trade show instantly, just as you can, without leaving their locations.  You get a wider outreach this way, and everyone gets to participate.  While the conference or trade show is in progress, attendees can continue to spread the word in their social media circles.

Cons:

Distractions

When you’re attending an event in person, there is nothing to distract you (assuming you turn your cell phone off and aren’t online on your tablet).  The office however is full of distractions, from the phone ringing to the internet being at your fingertips.  You have to find a way for attendees to virtual conferences at your office not to be distracted by these local activities.

Less Spontaneous

While the fast-paced nature of online events may help you meet more people, there is also less spontaneity in the virtual world.  When you are attending an expo event in person, it is common to just bump into random people—who then may turn out to be interested in your company or products.  These people can forge important professional connections with you.  You are far less likely to randomly meet people at a virtual event who are not present specifically to talk to you.  This can make networking more challenging.

No Business Vacation Element

Some employees view attending events in the offline world as a kind of reward.  This is because trip tends to be just that—a trip.  Even though they are required to do business on their trip, it can still be seen as a kind of vacation, one where many expenses are being paid by the company in return for attendance at a trade show or conference.  It may take a toll on employee morale if these trips are removed.  Not all employees view them as an inconvenience.  Many look forward to them all year, so you may need to find another way to reward your employees.

With INXPO’s award-winning virtual online platform you now have the ability to reach a global audience, further increasing your event ROI. Enable additional revenue opportunities by allowing access to content even after the curtains have closed, for as long as you’d like. With access to real time reporting you can track and measure the effectiveness of your events and share specific analytics with your key stakeholders including your partners, speakers, and executive sponsors.

In addition to Dr Umesh Kumar 's very thorough answer, you might want to take a look at some of the responses to a related question here:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Academia_and_virtual_conferences

I agree with the points made by Dr Umesh Lilhore.

Now what would be desirable enhancement:

-i) to the virtual conference as we know it

-ii) to the classical conference with physical presence.

-i) Sociability tools

Once you hear the speakers or the Q&A contributors, you may want to interact with them, hear more from them.

It may be interesting to get background, further Q&A opportunities continued later (chat/blog) to expand new ideas coming from the conference, or gaining deeper insight on what was presented.

It may also be good to have "virtual coffee" opportunity with interested people one-to-one or as interest groups one could subscribe to

-ii) Health and safety could be introduced at classical physical events

We have learnt that NPIs (non pharmaceutical interventions) from Health Policy against contagion, starts with health distancing, and can have different intensity levels up to lockdown at home.

This might be easier to support by a conference organised with modularity:

-case of session for a very large group addressed by one or few speakers from a podium

The physical social distancing may increase the health risk of gathering 50-100-1000 people in one space, except if this space is outdoors (or a large exhibition venue), similar to a pop concert in a park or field, with the possibility for attendees to have individual pic-nick tables and seats. Audio and video transmission from "the podium" may be staged in a variety of ways, as well as feedback and Q&A.

-case of smaller podium-less session for smaller and more interactive group

In such session, the discrepancy of role between the speakers and the other attendees is less. Social distancing should play against people sitting at the same table in direct visual and audio contact.

That would be eased by having people moving on a floor-marked space, where mutual distance is kept safe.

Audio communication might be using wireless microphones and audio renderers (loudspeakers or headsets). Visual aspects might be less problematic (robustness of visual signals versus more attenuation and interference impact on conversation audio signals in free air propagation).

-case of one-to-one, coffee-break type of sessions

An image coming to mind is the see-saw, where the two persons in conversation are seated a comfortable and safe space apart. Then seating or table standing arrangements inspired by the seesaw might suitably host convenient and safe one-to-one interactions.

Corridor conversations might be eased by floor marks where two people in conversation might safely stand.

I hope that the above adds to the previous contributions:

-improving virtual conferencing for more sociability

-improve physical conferencing for safer sessions

Do you agree?

Thank. Some very interesting responses so far.

There might be new expenses involved too such as technicians, I'm guessing...

That's true Alice although still probably a lot cheaper than renting a real venue.

Pros:

Easy way to meet regardless of place and time.

Interactive ways of media can be used.

Questions and answers are available easily.

It can be recorded and clouded to review later.

Cons:

May be not being used to that.

I recently attended a 2-day virtual conference. I was surprised how interesting and engaging it was and not tiring at all. I have heard a number of commentators saying that people are getting 'zoomed out' but I have found that events that have adequate breaks and allow for participant input in chat rooms and Q&As are fine.

Visual meetings are perfect for small groups, exceeding 10-15 people would be a major logistical problem. If you want a fluid communication, to deal with each point with the person in charge in a suitable time and, above all, to have a fast capacity of call, you must choose a virtual meeting. Some benefits for virtual congress are like:

1.They add flexibility to projects 2. Reduce reaction times 3. Facilitates team meetings 4.Reduce logistical costs

Dinesh. I agree for meetings, it maybe more problematic for large teams although in zoom, breakout rooms can be very useful in such situations. However, at a conference, when papers are being given normally the delegates will just be listening to the speaker so there is less interactivity until the Q&A time at the end. And I agree that it really does reduce logistical overheads. What I've really liked is not spending anytime on travel.

I believe the perspective and concerns of the conference organizers (cost, logistics) and the perspective and concerns of attendees (cost, logistics, benefits) are also different. Even for attendees, pros and cons are also dependent on your situations/status/position (student vs Research vs Junior Faculty vs Senior Professor, vs Industry Engineer vs Sponsor, ....) From an attendee perspective I personally more significant cons than pros. A couple of months ago, I wrote a piece about this (my own opinion):

https://www.researchgate.net/post/My_Opinion_on_Virtual_Conferences

A virtual conference is an interactive online event that brings together a group of people with similar interests or expertise so that they can learn from one another. Similar to live conferences, they are very engaging but occur entirely online rather than in a physical location.

Dear Dr. Stephen Palmer ,

The Cons of virtual conferences are:

Pl. Follow this link about Pros & Cons Of Hosting A Virtual Conference:

https://www.vfairs.com/pros-cons-of-hosting-a-virtual-conference/

Dear Abdelkader Mohamed Elsayed

Good pros and cons list. Thank you.

Regarding 'No face-face networking', some of the virtual conferences I've attended allowed live discussion between the speaker and other attendees so that you can still feel as if you are talking/discussing to each other. You can see and hear each other. However, other conferences have just used Q & A posted questions so although it comes over as more professional, it is far less interactive.

Pros: Saves money and time.

Cons: Poor internet connectivity can be an issue.