The long and short of it

Throughout the pandemic the industry braced itself for the return of live meetings and events.

We longed for delegates, guests and travellers to be attending in person activities, which would fill hotels and venues with opportunities, networking and learning experiences from the content delivered.

Corporates remained unable to commit and focused inward on their own businesses, their people and their next phase of return to a new normal.

However this new normal has seen a spike in the demand for short lead business being channelled into hotels and venues, whether direct or via their trusted agency/partner.

Meetings and events have taken a new twist in which the lead time of a booking to actual delivery is shorter than before and this is creating even more pressure on resources, costs and deliverables, in an already challenged marketplace.

First there was furlough, a life saver for many businesses; then Brexit, which impacted the industry’s ability to attract and retain team members; then all the redundancies, in which experienced team members were forced to leave. Currently, talent is being lost to more lifestyle businesses, which in some cases pose less of a perceived risk to the person than working in our sector.

This, coupled with the shorter lead time, is having a negative impact on the ability to deliver against briefs. Therefore costs are going to increase through supply and demand.

That's before you even get to the overwhelming lack of resource, which is seeing employers having to pay over the odds to bring in temporary staff to service bookings, with additional issues such as inexperienced hired hands, who will have to learn on the job prior to moving on to the next job, the following day.

Education is key to get everyone in the sector thinking differently about their calendar of meetings and events.

While we absolutely want to see the return to live increase, a controlled approach will support the sector to navigate our way through this and align demand with the ability to deliver safely, and to maintain the service levels our industry has built up over time, with passion.