The pandemic has had a heavy impact on the Italian meetings industry, which has come to a standstill after registering steady growth in the last five years, according to research conducted by Università Cattolica’s Graduate School of Economics and International Relations in cooperation with Federcongressi&eventi.

Areal setback for an industry that has recorded steady positive growth for the last five years, with an average increase in event numbers of 4.1% a year.

Conference and events venues have seen most of those already scheduled canceled: 69.7% of conferences and events have been canceled, 16.9% deferred until 2021 and only 13.4% postponed to a date later this year. These are the figures emerging from the research study “The impact of Covid-19 on the Italian meetings industry: the outlook for conference and events venues” conducted by the Graduate School of Economics and International Relations of Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (ASERI) in cooperation with the Italian meetings industry association Federcongressi&eventi. The survey was conducted as part of the Italian Survey of Conferences and Events (Osservatorio Italiano dei Congressi e degli Eventi – OICE), the study that monitors annual trends within the industry.

Canceled events

The sudden and prolonged lockdown has to date led to the cancellation of 69.7% of events of the total at the conference and events facilities that took part in the survey. At the national level, this translates into an estimated loss of approximately 215,000 events, considering that the meetings already planned or those that could potentially be hosted in 2020represent 70% of the annual total.

Specifically, some differences emerged depending on the type of venue (figure 1): in conference hotels, on average 71.2% of events were definitively canceled, 11.2% postponed and 17.6% deferred to 2021; in conference centers, 63.4% of events were canceled, 22.9% postponed and the remaining 13.7% deferred to next year; in trade fair-convention venues, 43.5% of events were deferred until 2021, 38.8% completely canceled and 17.7% postponed until a date later in 2020.

October 8th, 2020 | Fonte: ftnnews.com