Coronavirus and event planning

[somanydevices]

I'm helping run 2 events.

One's a weekend residential away with about 30 adults and 8 DC.
One's a community event, similar to an open gardens event with lots of participants locally.

Both in May,

What kind of contingency planning would you do for coronavirus?
For the residential - if you could cancel now without the participants losing much money but ploughing ahead meant them potentially losing money if the virus means we have to cancel last minute, would you?

Is it madness to plan events right now or are we meant to be carrying on as normal.

WWYD?

Is there any actual solid advice or data I can base such planning on? Has there been advice about attending such events yet?

Thanks.

Reckon it won't be long until public gatherings are restricted. But probably not for a couple of weeks going by what has been said today.

Ok a couple of questions!

What's the financial risk to you - if you have to cancel the venue and any other suppliers you have contracted with? Usually, the more notice of cancellation the less money the event organiser will lose.

What's the profile of your attendees? I run a lot of events people attend for their work, and most of the larger employers are stopping their staff from attending my events. The smaller companies are still sending their staff so we are still holding anything that people have booked and paid for a ticket for, in the next couple of weeks.

Of course if the government advice changes we will act on it.

Realistically I don't expect any of our events to take place in April, May or June but I can't say that publicly yet. I'm certainly not committing to any new contracts.

The weekend away - is this a social thing with people you know? If so could you ask them for a view? Set out the situation regarding costs ie ‘If we cancel now we will each have to sacrifice £x. If we keep it in the diary and then have to cancel nearer the time it will cost us £x each.’

For the community event, what are the costs (time and money) involved at each stage of cancellation? What demographic of people does it involve? Are there any indoor gatherings?

The weekend away is part work, part social. I work for a small business and it's an annual event for people in our niche sector, but it's a lovely venue, we stay overnight, and some people bring partners and kids. I just give my time with some others to help organise. Everyone self-funds via the organisers. We need to pay a 30% deposit by the end of this week, with the remainder the following month. We won't get the deposit back plus those coming by train will presumably be booking early to save money and some are coming a fair distance.

We will talk to them about to get views but I wanted to arm myself with facts first so I have some idea of what's reasonable.

The community event involves all ages, children to old people. There are no indoor gatherings. When we started planning the rain was the biggest risk!

Realistically I don't expect any of our events to take place in April, May or June but I can't say that publicly yet.

That's a worry

Get event insurance

Thanks but event insurance won't cut it. Neither event is about making money. Any profit from the community event goes to a local charity.

The residential event is self funded by the individuals attending. They'd have to all get insurance individually, not sure if that's even doable at this point?

And the other event isn't about money, it's a community thing.

This is more about whether we should plough ahead or not. And if not, on what basis?

I'd suggest moving the weekend away to September - people will be glad not to pay a deposit they could lose. The venue will be glad to still have your business.

As for the 'open garden' I would get in touch with all the participants saying its very hard to predict what will be happening then. If they don't mind bearing with you and carry on 'tending to their garden', you will keep in touch with them as events unfold.

P.S. in 20 years of running events I have never insured one for cancellation, its ridiculously expensive and largely pointless.

I would postpone the weekend away, you will probably get a lot of people deciding no for themselves. The community event sounds like something that would be relatively easy to cancel nearer the time.

I have several events running over next few months. We have cancelled a key stakeholders meeting for this week (no cost) and i think will pull the plug today on event in under 2 weeks time. CE's decision but keynote speaker pulled put yesterday. We will lose about 3K catering costs. Beyond that who knows...

This has made me realise I’ve been invited to a VE May bank holiday (the Friday one) street party. No idea whether there are lots being organised but the timing looks dodgy if we follow an ‘italy’ trajectory and are around 2 weeks behind. Hmmm

Do you think September is a safe bet?

Do you think September is a safe bet?

No one can tell you that. Even top scientists. But it’s a safer bet than now, and if you can all ‘hold’ a date for a few months it buys you time without shelling out money you won’t get back. Or you could just cancel.

I work in events too (large events) and am not expecting anything to run from late March to September, at the earliest.

Also work in events and I would not plan any events of my own until October at the earliest

I work in what's currently being described in the press as the 'small and medium conference curcuit'. We have just cancelled all our events up to September and many of our partners and competitors are too.

Personally, I have several events for approx 50ish people (big birthdays etc), which I expect I will have to cancel.

ALmost all the venues have been happy to transfer the deposits/bookings to a date later in the year, and prefer this to us cancelling. Have you asked the venues if they are willing to do this? Would this work for you?