As mentioned in my previous blog, The Event Experience so ‘Farr’, there are countless concerns around the corona virus for so many people and businesses.
For this blog, I wanted to stress the importance of the hospitality industry, how the current situation is impacting the industry and what this potentially means for event planners.
Currently in the UK, 3.2 million people work in the hospitality industry. The hospitality industry contributes more than £120bn a year to the economy, making it the third largest industry in the UK (The Guardian, 2020).
In the UK there are over 10,000 venues, these venues in a year attract over 85 million attendees making the UK’s events Industry worth £42.3bn (Eventbrite, 2020). The UK wedding industry alone is worth £10bn (Sky News, 2020), however, conference and meeting sector tops all the event sectors at £19.9bn (Eventbrite, 2020).
So, what do all these figures mean? Well its evident that the UK’s hospitality industry is significantly boosting the UK’s economy. 67% of all event organiser’s in the UK expected their events to grow over the next 12 months (Eventbrite, 2020).
Now what? All events across the UK; concerts, tours, festivals, sports tournaments, weddings… have all been cancelled. What does this mean for the UK’s economy moving forward? Is the hospitality industry going to have to move towards a world of virtualisation – is this going to overtake the real world? If so, what does this mean for event planners? Everyone wants that personal touch, will virtualisation allow for this? will attendees be happy, or will it just become the ‘excepted norm’?
In my next blog, I will be discussing different ways in which the hospitality industry could potential move forward. In the meantime, what are your thoughts, are things going to change, or do you think everyone is just waiting for all of this to just blow over?
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