The impact of COVID-19 on the events industry

COVID-19 has had a great impact on our lives over the last year and we have seen the effects that it has had on many businesses. The events industry has been hit particularly hard with venues and businesses shutting their doors. In this blog post we reflect on what it’s meant for the event industry, universities, and our own events at Pickle Jar Communications.

The UK events industry is a huge industry by any measure and is worth £42.3 billion. There are 570,000 full time jobs supported by the industry, 35% of the UK visitor economy is accounted for by events and event attendees spend £65,943 annually in registration fees. Or at least, these were the figures before COVID-19 and our national lockdowns. 

Due to social distancing all events were cut across the world which was a first for the industry as profits stopped, redundancies and furloughs were made and venues sat empty. 

It wasn’t just the corporate sector that suffered either as studies show that the wedding industry missed out on £5.3 billion for the sector in 2020 alone with many couples having to rearrange their weddings multiple times or dropping their guest list down to 30 attendees to abide by the rules. 

International events were also postponed… some for the first time in history. The Olympics were due to take place in Tokyo before the pandemic hit, causing many implications for everyone involved and for it to be pushed back a year. Other large events were also cancelled such as music tours, festivals, the London Marathon, Grand National and many other famous sporting events. 

What effect has it had on events in the education sector?

Universities especially have had to adapt in the last year to ensure they are still offering the best service for their future, and present students with online events to substitute the events they would have held in person. Recruitment open days and graduations were cancelled or forced to meet virtually, but were students getting the information they needed from the virtual events?

Many universities across the UK will have seen losses of revenue from conference facilities, and like us at Pickle Jar Communications, will have had to innovate to adapt to the new world we’re living in.

At Pickle Jar Communications we have also had to learn to adapt our events and when we had to rearrange our ContentEd event we were forced to look at alternative delivery routes and went on to work with Forumm on an online event platform which was a great success at the start of 2021. The event was a great accomplishment for us and we had delegates sign up from all over the world which fuelled our decision to run ContentEd as a hybrid event this time around.

But will we recover? 

Reflecting on the changes we have all encountered over the last year, hybrid and digital events look like they could be sticking around as they have more of an international reach and the world has become more adaptable to the new ways of coming together and connecting. 

It's been a damaging year for the entire industry and no one knows when we will be likely to recover from the losses and the estimated recovery dates have been shifted back many times already. 

But as we look towards the future now the vaccine has been rolling out across the world in the last few months, we could be a little closer to hearing the buzz of a venue filling, and the cheers of a crowd. With the date of the 21st of June 2021 in mind and in sight, it looks as if we could be back in our venues soon, dusting off the stages and reuniting with colleagues. 

It will be tough and rocky over the next few years for the industry as we get used to being at work again and get over the anxiety of being in close proportion to people. Digital events will be a memory in some cases and we will enjoy being back in the office and not “working from home” - unless you have a dog, because the office just isn’t the same without your dog trying to climb on your lap whilst you’re writing an email, right?

But I do believe that the industry will recover. 

The events industry is known for bringing together crowds of people to interact, to socialise, to be together as a family and watch loved ones be married, to enjoy music and to make connections, and we are now as an industry forced to cope with regulations designed to keep people apart.