When will the events industry recover?

Coronavirus COVID-19 has highlighted the benefit of face-to face meetings and the rules about staying at home had a huge and immediate impact on the events industry. Not knowing what the future holds, how and when the events industry will recover is the big question for all of us.

The first thing that we need is for businesses to recover, as soon as they have confidence then the conferences and meetings will return. However, there will be a long-term economic impact from the measures that the government has taken. The attendees will need to feel comfortable to meeting in groups and to feel save travelling. So, until there is a vaccine and reduction in social distancing, they may not be willing to attend events.

Opinion

Jacqui Kavanagh, CEO of EDGEvenues, thinks that smaller meetings in the UK will be organised first, but then it will take at least nine months for the larger International events to recover.

The venues will also need to play their part to get the industry going again and make their Terms and Conditions very clear, particularly if there are more waves of Coronavirus COVID-19. Jacqui said, “Venues need to make their policies transparent and part of the selection process. There needs to be clearer communication of when the cancellation charges kick in and the payment schedules. Venues need to look at their Terms and Conditions now, because they will need to me more flexible to win business. The quicker they do this, the more likely they are to gain the booking from the client.”

what do the surveys say?

There have been several surveys recently which have asked event organisers when they are rescheduling postponed events and when they are planning to organise new conferences and meetings. We’ve looked at three polls which have come out in the last week and give an prediction of the trends.

• I-meet do a weekly survey of more than 900 event planners, which are made up of 33% corporates, 20% associations, 31% 3rd party organisers and 16% others. The results of this on 20 April, were 50% anticipate returning this summer and 76% before the end of this year. This was a slight increase in the number of events being planned for Q4 of 2020 and in 2021 compared with the same survey the week before.

• On 15th April MeetingsNet did a poll of organisers who had dialled in to a webinar. The quantity of responses isn’t known, but similarly 50% are planning to return to events this summer and 87% by the end of this year.

• MPI’s held Global Meeting Industry Day online on 14th April and they asked more than 6,200 attendees when they were planning to resume events. This is by far the largest survey and was from MPI members throughout the world. It found that 72% are planning to return to events this summer and 90% by the end of this year.

We all hope for a swift recovery to events and hopefully we will come out of it soon, but the feeling is that the world will be a different place and we will have to adapt accordingly. As we said at the beginning, not knowing what the future holds, how and when this situation is going to end is the big question for all of us and one we can’t answer at the moment.

For more industry insights, take a look at Edgevenues.com.