You may have heard the recent news revolving around the Indian variant, and you may have watched Boris Johnson’s new conference on Friday (14th May 2021) with bated breath wondering if he’s going to slam the brakes on.
Thankfully he chose to progress with the roadmap out of lockdown and we hit one of the key dates on Monday 17th May 2021. 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.
So, to where we find ourselves today, the Indian Variant of COVID seems to have come to the top of the news agenda to become the current buzz phrase.
But 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? We’re not going to predict the future, or even delve into our bag and pull out our all-powerful crystal ball, but we have found ourselves at this point before.
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 is 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.
We’ve put together a quick PDF checklist of items you may wish to consider putting in place in case your event may be affected by the introduction of local restrictions, download it here.
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.
It’s not a difficult task to carry out either, but could save you a huge headache in the future.
If you’re unsure of what options you have available to you; or are nervous and not sure where to start, our friendly team is on hand to help advise and guide you. If you’ve not started looking at your event project yet and are exploring options, it’s the best time to speak with our team, we can offer up advice and guidance to ensure your event can be delivered.
