The Effects of COVID-19 on the Hospitality & Events Industry

The World has been hit by the deadly virus known as COVID19, which is not yet fully under control. It has caused vast economic strain on many businesses. Although the economic outlook for 2021 is anticipated at 6% and moderating at 4.4% for 2022 (IMF, 2021) many businesses and economies are still to recover.

Tourism and hospitality have seen a major dent in revenues, according to the United Nations World Tourism Organisation, in January 2021 International travel was down by 87% (UNTWO, 2021).

One industry that will have felt the pinch more than most is the events and exhibitions industry. With a 68% contraction in business (UFI, 2021), it is set to be one of the hardest hit, especially with major events still being cancelled or postponed. As an organiser of international technology exhibitions and conferences that rely heavily on the possibility that attendees are able to travel worldwide to a single location without restriction this has obviously had a major impact on our events. I have now found myself having to assess how all this will affect our business not only now but also in the future.

Vaccine rollouts have been increasing and many have anticipated “a return to normalcy by 3rd or 4th quarter 2021” (Chaumilind, et al., 2021). But according to the Lancet, “it will likely be a few years before the virus can be brought under control worldwide” (NCBI, 2021).

This means we need to look at alternative ways of doing business to survive long term.

Salford University MSc Digital Business

In exploring new ideas to make our business more efficient and after considering many alternative ways to attain more knowledge, I decided to enrol in an MSc in Digital Business at Salford Business School (School, 2021).

The course consisted of lectures on Project Management, Leadership and Skills: Planning and Control, Information Systems and Digital Transformation, Digital Business and Entrepreneurship and Search and Social Media Marketing. 

The lectures on Digital Business and Entrepreneurship were particularly useful as it gave me an insight into the digital marketing aspects of running an exhibition business and particularly Technology Trade shows.. It also helped me to explore ideas about where I could take my event organisation in a post-COVID19 world. It expanded my awareness of new social media platforms, especially the use of mobil, and ways to use them for marketing purposes and how to create a Digital Marketing Strategy (Stoychev, 2020). Through seminars and the dissertation, I also learned about digital marketing techniques that could be applied to exhibition management such as SEO, PPC, email marketing and social media promotional tools like Twitter, Linked-in and Facebook and how to develop an own brand (Purkiss & Royston-Lee, 2012).

Why Digital Business?

Our events are multi-facetted, AV ( Audio Visual) draws visitors from multiple industries , professions and hierarchical layers within those sectors. Effective ways of promoting an event is to attract a broad pool of visitors from across these demographics. Digital Marketing has helped me in developing our digital strategy and creating customised profiles (Buyer Personas) on the online and in-person platforms for future events. Mapping these into a wide audience through social media and blogs will be instrumental in promoting our events and allow us to use the right mix of digital media and mobile tools in conjunction with offline promotional activities.

Being able to create a more extensive digital marketing campaign by drawing from a larger group of people through social media and other mediums will help us to improve our capacity for reaching potential attendees and create more positive impact. Also, using digital and mobile platforms can be faster and more efficient as well as cost-effective. It will open up new horizons for building need to appeal to them all and make them aware of the value our events can bring them. To do so we need a methodical approach. A good Digital Marketing Strategy offers a framework that helps us identify new opportunities and develop new ways to market ourselves, gain traction in a crowded landscape and maximise both revenue generation and efficiency (Stoychev, 2020).

Numerous industries are exploring possibilities for growth by developing their own brand using platforms such as Twitter, LinkedIn or YouTube. These platforms allow business owners to connect with audiences directly through their social media channels like Facebook and Twitter.. Combining this digital strategy allows us as organisers in the technology events sector to establish ourselves as an authority in organising exhibitions (Purkiss & Royston-Lee, 2012).

We have learnt very clearly that a one-fits-all approach does not create enough engagement. The module ‘Search and Social Media Marketing’ has helped me to work with developing “Buyer Personas” for our attendees and developing digital campaigns that best address the individual groups effectively.

We also used Content Marketing as a module in one of our lectures about Digital Business and Entrepreneurship. This simply means that instead of just promoting ourselves by communicating what we do, why we are good at it, we produce useful information through posts/articles on social media platforms and blogs for our Buyer Personas.

Some Practial Implementation & Results

We are currently still in a COVID19 phase, which means we need to assess how this will affect what we do as event organisers. Our first move was to cancel the ISE 2021 Exhibition in Barcelona . This provided us with a unique opportunity to re-assess our business and and experiment with online events (ISE, 2020). We have explored a number of platforms, with our first event taking place on Hopin.com and subsequent events on Cisco live (ISE, 2021). As part of the event planning we used extensive Social Media to promote and register attendees which gave us invaluable feedback on what works and what doesn’t.

More importantly we have looked into our own administrative and logistical task to see how we can increase efficiency in our operations. Through the Project Management, Leadership and Skills: Planning and Control module I re-visited the theme of Event Project Management and some of its key components. These included communication, time management and risk assessment which we can apply to our event planning and execution. It highlighted the communication and openness to allow everyone to be involved in the process, from suppliers to partners and staff alike, a chance to get involved. Using our varied expertise we can pinpoint major risk factors for an event and work on strategies to reduce these risks. By sharing ideas and discussing possible solutions we see new paths of thinking emerge which could improve or enhance the events we organise. This has led to ISE adopting a new Project Management software tool, Asana (Asana,2021). 

Information Systems and Digital Transformation, one of the core modules, covered some key topics that we will be looking at as we assess how any pandemic can change our business. These included information management systems to improve efficiency (Salesforce, Sage Cloud, social media and e-commerce platform selection) as well as their use in developing business strategy.

Conclusion

The course has provided me with a methodical approach for assessment of our business. Implementation of some themes has already started and proven effective.

I am confident that my experience at Salford Business School will help me manage the major technology exhibitions that we run in the future more effectively as a result of the digital transformation that we have already started and still plan also to implement. 

References

Bibliography

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Stoychev, I., 2020. Digital and social media marketing strategy. In: A. Heinze, G. Fletcher, T. Rashid & A. Cruz, eds. Digital and social media marketing. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, pp. 98-120.

UFI.org, 2021. The Global Exhibition Barometer July 2021. [Online]
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UNWTO, 2021. TOURIST ARRIVALS DOWN 87% IN JANUARY 2021 AS UNWTO CALLS FOR STRONGER COORDINATION TO RESTART TOURISM. [Online]
Available at: https://www.unwto.org/news/tourist-arrivals-down-87-in-january-2021-as-unwto-calls-for-stronger-coordination-to-restart-tourism [Accessed 18 August 2021].