While 2020 was a hard year for the festival/conferences industry, organisers have had to come up with innovative ways to keep the industry afloat.
“Covid-19 has really affected us and the impact has been huge and these figures as we will record them in a year’s time will probably be much lower. The province’s ability to host big events in the coming years will go a long way in contributing towards a recovery for the sector. Wesgro’s Convention Bureau has also recently announced that since the beginning of the financial year they have been able to secure 17 future bookings for business events scheduled to take place in 2022-2024, with an estimated value of around R510 million.
“What we are also seeing is questions around how do you bring those online experiences into people’s homes, creating an interactive event. We are going to see people get a lot more innovative because we are in for a good six to 12 months of tough times for our industry so we need to keep innovating so hybrid is definitely where it is going to be next year.”
“We’ve got to sell it in that if you can’t come this year you can always come next year and that was the core belief behind what we did this year because we are still selling the product for the coming year.