With 3/4 phases on the pandemic roadmap down, businesses around the world are springing back into action to reunite employees and find their footing again as a company. Today marks a huge step in the right direction for the events and hospitality industry, as for the first time in months restrictions have been lifted enough for live events to go ahead.
If you missed the update, here’s what you can now look forward to…
- Indoor entertainment (such as museums and cinemas) can resume
- Outdoor events allowed up to the lower of 4,000 attendees or 50 per cent capacity
- Indoor events for up 1,000 people or 50% venue capacity, not including staff, contractors or exhibitors
- Catering can also be provided for permitted events, such as business events and private dining
- Business events e.g. conferences, tradeshows, exhibitions, charity auctions, and private dinings such as charity or gala dinners and awards ceremonies, and corporate hospitality are all permitted
- International Travel to a ‘Green List’ of countries
As we’ve been building up to this point on the roadmap, we’ve had a surge of confident clients coming to us for employee events in 2021 once all limitations are lifted. In the last few months, we’ve started to plan live client events for June and July 2021 for events with 250 delegates, and even bigger numbers for later in the year with briefs currently for 450 delegates in December and 1200 delegates for March 2022.
Richard Bridge, Top Banana Founder comments “We understand that every client is different and will return to live events in their own way and at their own pace, but we’re working hard to get everything in place to ensure we put safety at the heart of everything we do and make sure our clients and their delegates feel safe. That’s our number one priority. We’re excited to take our new skills, technology and feedback from the virtual world and use them to create even more incredible live experiences. It’s an exciting future after a challenging year for so many.”
Nothing beats the buzz and adrenaline of a live event, but we thought it was time for a reality check on how the population really feel about going back to live. So, we did a LinkedIn poll to check how people are feeling about returning to the real world.
A 60% majority voted that they’re ready to get back in action – great news for the industry and our clients! But a hesitant 19% still need longer to adjust or weren’t interested at all. Our Managing Director Jemma Peers, comments on the results…
“This was not surprising to us, as we know that we’ve all had very different experiences of the pandemic and those who are not yet vaccinated or live with vulnerable people may still need more time to adapt. What’s great is that over 80% are excited and looking forward to live events! The 22% nervous about safety I think is a really sensible bunch and the thing that will give people the most confidence is going to an event that they feel comfortable at, and getting used to the environment. Even if it’s just the local farmers market or a cinema night, people will find their footing again and I don’t doubt that by August, these statistics will reflect an even more confident population. Until then we’ll continue to put safety at the heart of everything we do and give everyone a choice on how they experience a Top Banana Event”.
We’re so excited to get back to live and face to face experiences, if you have any questions on how to move forward in this next phase of 2021, get in touch!