The lift­ing of the gov­ern­ment’s re­stric­tions has not on­ly been em­braced by core busi­ness­es but al­so those in the ser­vices sec­tor, name­ly events man­age­ment prac­ti­tion­ers. This ac­cord­ing to events strate­gist Tisha Jack.

Jack re­cent­ly co-au­thored a book chap­ter ti­tled, From Face to Face to Meet­ing in Space: The Im­pact of COVID-19 on the Events In­dus­try in Trinidad and To­ba­go, with se­nior lec­tur­er, tourism and hos­pi­tal­i­ty man­age­ment at UWI Dr Leslie-Ann Jor­dan-Miller.

The chap­ter analy­ses the im­pact of the pan­dem­ic on the meet­ings, in­cen­tives, con­fer­ences and ex­hi­bi­tion sec­tor in T&T, with spe­cif­ic ex­plo­ration of some of the strate­gies that have be­gun to be im­ple­ment­ed to re­spond, re­vi­talise and trans­form the in­dus­try.

This study main­ly used sec­ondary da­ta, in­clud­ing in­dus­try pub­li­ca­tions, news­pa­per ar­ti­cles, and rep­utable web­sites.

The book ti­tled, COVID in the Is­lands: A com­par­a­tive per­spec­tive on the Caribbean and the Pa­cif­ic edit­ed by Yonique Camp­bell and John Con­nell con­sid­ers the com­plex im­pacts of the pan­dem­ic in two is­land re­gions and with­in sev­er­al is­lands and is­land states.

Fo­cus­ing on T&T’s events in­dus­try and its vi­a­bil­i­ty post-COVID, Jack who has been in the sec­tor for 14 years, not­ed that it is al­ready show­ing signs of re­cov­ery as larg­er so­cial events are be­ing planned and mar­ket­ed, bring­ing in much-need­ed rev­enue re­lief.

“Cor­po­rate is ex­plor­ing how they can once again en­gage their in­ter­nal and ex­ter­nal cus­tomers in a safe and en­joy­able way,” she ex­plained.

Fur­ther, Jack said the need for an event co-or­di­na­tor has al­ways been sub­jec­tive, adding that the pan­dem­ic didn’t change that.

“There will al­ways be those that can ex­e­cute on their own (or think they can). There will al­so al­ways be those who have lim­it­ed time and hu­man re­sources and gen­er­al­ly ap­pre­ci­ate the val­ue an event co­or­di­na­tor/man­ag­er brings.

“They will con­tin­ue to make it a pri­or­i­ty in their bud­gets to help them ex­e­cute their events at the stan­dard and qual­i­ty that they wish,” Jack said.

De­scrib­ing the in­dus­try as an im­por­tant liveli­hood for many, she added whilst some may have turned to oth­er av­enues, the ma­jor­i­ty of prac­ti­tion­ers still man­age events full time.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, to fu­el this, T&T’s “cul­ture” show­cas­es what the in­dus­try is about.

“We love bring­ing peo­ple to­geth­er to­wards a greater goal,” Jack ex­plained.

How­ev­er, she out­lined that go­ing for­ward events are go­ing to “look a bit dif­fer­ent for a while” as it still re­quires re­spon­si­ble plan­ning due to COVID-19.

“Some may choose to host their events in safe zones even though the na­tion­al re­quire­ment is lift­ed based on the na­ture of their event,” Jack not­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­search, the events in­dus­try has been one of the hard­est hit in­dus­tries dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

In May 2020, the Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion of Event Pro­fes­sion­als (CAEP), con­duct­ed a sur­vey of 170 event pro­fes­sion­als in T&T to de­ter­mine the state of the in­dus­try.

Its con­clu­sions al­so recog­nised the sig­nif­i­cant im­pact that the pan­dem­ic had on the in­dus­try; some 30 per cent of the event busi­ness­es sur­veyed had can­celled all their events for 2020 al­though, am­bi­tious­ly, an­oth­er 30 per cent pre­dict­ed that about 90 per cent of their planned events were still go­ing to take place, the chap­ter said.

And ac­cord­ing to CAEP, the hard­est hit peo­ple in the events in­dus­try were the low­er, skills-based work­ers who “re­ly heav­i­ly on the cash-based in­come that they are paid im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter an event, in or­der to sur­vive.”

UN T&T al­so not­ed that the can­cel­la­tion of ma­jor fes­ti­vals, sig­na­ture events and hol­i­day week­end pack­ages as a re­sult of COVID-19 re­stric­tions neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed a sig­nif­i­cant share of the work­ing pop­u­la­tion and re­sult­ed in an over­all loss of eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty with­in the coun­try.

Like­wise, the T&T Ser­vices of Coali­tion In­dus­tries and the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion Re­port (2020) had stat­ed: “One sec­tor that has been neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed is the arts, en­ter­tain­ment and recre­ation sec­tor known as the cre­ative in­dus­try.

“Many busi­ness­es ex­pe­ri­enced can­cel­la­tions in per­for­mances, sport­ing events and train­ing have been halt­ed, work­ers have been laid off and com­pa­nies are strug­gling to sur­vive.”

This, it added, had an im­por­tant im­pact as this very ac­tive en­ter­tain­ment sub-sec­tor, which sup­ports the events in­dus­try, is labour in­ten­sive and con­tributed rough­ly sev­en per cent of GDP an­nu­al­ly.

Mov­ing For­wards,

Mov­ing Out­wards

Re­search al­so not­ed that COVID raised ba­sic ques­tions about safe­ty and thus the lo­ca­tion and phys­i­cal struc­ture of events, ques­tions that had nev­er been need­ed in the past.

“As the pos­si­bil­i­ty of stag­ing events be­came more like­ly lat­er in the year, out­door venues, where fea­si­ble, were the sug­gest­ed op­tion as air cir­cu­la­tion in in­door venues pose a high­er risk of in­fec­tions oc­cur­ring.

“The down­side to this op­tion for plan­ners was the risk of the weath­er, that could present cost chal­lenges, along­side phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing,” it ex­plained.

Un­der­pin­ning all these changes, and cov­er­ing ad­ver­tis­ing, tick­et­ing and ac­com­mo­da­tion, was the greater role of tech­nol­o­gy, as “band­width” and “stream­ing” were two words that every­one in the in­dus­try was hav­ing to be­come fa­mil­iar with, the chap­ter al­so cit­ed.

Say­ing that pre-record­ed con­tent will form at least part of live agen­das, it added that this can bring an ex­cit­ing el­e­ment to how events are ex­e­cut­ed and al­low event plan­ners to be­come more in­ter­na­tion­al­ly fo­cused.

How­ev­er, this may con­ceiv­ably dis­ad­van­tage some old­er or more “tra­di­tion­al” events par­tic­i­pants.

“If noth­ing else videog­ra­phy and tech­nol­o­gy had brought new hori­zons,” the chap­ter main­tained, em­pha­sis­ing that as coun­tries like T&T get clos­er to win­ning the bat­tle against COVID, event plan­ners will again have to read­just to ac­com­mo­date two au­di­ences si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly – vir­tu­al and in per­son.

Fur­ther, it al­so rec­om­mend­ed that giv­en the im­por­tance of the events in­dus­try to T&T, a more de­tailed eval­u­a­tion of the im­pact of the pan­dem­ic shock would be crit­i­cal to a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of the ex­tent of the eco­nom­ic and so­cio-cul­tur­al im­pact and to es­tab­lish what have been the most suc­cess­ful re­spons­es that will again al­low the events in­dus­try to be­come a valu­able source of for­eign ex­change, in­come, job op­por­tu­ni­ties, eco­nom­ic stim­u­la­tion and cul­tur­al ex­pres­sion.