Experts from events specialists AYRE Event Solutions have shared their insight into how the latest Covid-19 variants could impact the UK events industry, and the importance of resilience planning at this time. To help fellow event professionals, AYRE has created a PDF checklist of items they may wish to consider putting in place in case their event is affected by the introduction of local restrictions. The checklist can be downloaded here.
“You may have heard the recent news revolving around the Indian variant, and you may have watched Boris Johnson’s news conference on Friday (May 14) with bated breath wondering if he’s going to slam the brakes on opening up the events industry once again,” said AYRE Event Solutions managing director Chris Ayre.
“Thankfully he chose to progress with the roadmap out of lockdown, and we hit one of the key dates on Monday May 17. Bars, hotels, venues and loads of other hospitality venues flung their doors open to welcome customers back with what seems to have been great success.”
The Indian variant is now dominating headlines and local guidance is being released across the UK. But, says Ayre, why should event organisers pay attention to the current news and read a little further into what the Government is announcing compared to what the clinical professionals are saying?
“Before you start frantically calling all your venues, mass emailing your delegates or donning your disaster recovery hat, let’s just take stock of things. It’s important to keep an eye on the news, but you’re in a really fortunate position at the moment, you have a clear sight of the road ahead and the potential pothole which is progressing towards you so you can avoid hitting it.
“Building resilience plans into your event planning now will enable you to be a lot more agile if restrictions are changed, or if the government decides to impose the local tired structure again to control the variant.
“The most important part of resilience planning is ensuring you have open communication with all involved parties, and not just your suppliers. Understanding how they can support you in different scenarios will be beneficial and help support you in a potential change.
“One great element you should be paying very close attention to is hybrid event formats. These lend themselves perfectly to all types of events. Allowing you to still hold the event, albeit with a scaled back audience (if required) whilst still communicating with online delegates and still getting your message out there. Hybrid events also allow you to have remote presenters who can join the conference remotely which will be beneficial if any local restrictions or tiers are reintroduced
“Switching your event to a hybrid format is not a difficult task to carry out either, but it could really save you a huge headache in the future!”
To find out more about resilience planning, visit: https://www.ayre.events/indian-variant-and-resilience-planning/
