Recognised benchmarks and revised safety protocols are essential to restart business events in 2021 and even then, it will be the end of the year or even the following year before large-scale events restart. Many events will become hybrid and some - particularly training courses – may permanently become virtual.
These predictions about the state of events have been made by the board of HBAA, the events and hospitality association, as they look ahead to next year.
Large-scale business events will not return until the end of 2021 or even 2022, says HBAA governance director Sian Sayward.
“Smaller meetings and smaller/hybrid events will replace the large-scale offerings for 2021,” she says.
There will be “strong demand for employee engagement events, which by their very nature will need to be in person,” predicts David Taylor, HBAA advisor and non-executive director of BCD Meetings & Events.
“Regional countryside and sporting venues will be the main beneficiaries of this resurgence as their location and facilities will support the new best practices.”
However, “residential training will be hit hard. Many courses will now be lost to virtual,” he says.
Leigh Cowlishaw, HBAA consultant executive director, says: “Customer confidence in booking, staying, travelling and attending is affected, with many organisations not actually allowing these activities to take place, or tiers making these decisions for us. Therefore assurances, recognised benchmarks and the ability to showcase revised protocols and standards is absolutely key to kick start recovery.
“As an industry we have adapted our ways of working and implemented measurements to ensure that the customer journey touch points have been considered and are as safe as they can be. We need to continue to shout about this and pre-empting concerns individuals or companies may have.”
Safety concerns will continue to contribute to the rise of virtual and hybrid events, believes Beckie Towle, HBAA marketing director and founder of The Events Raccoon who adds, “We will see a commitment from clients to run the events they may have held off in 2020 but I think virtual and hybrid will be the way in which they feel safe to do this.”