LOS ANGELES – While the persistent presence of Covid is impeding everyone’s ability to plan any kind of trip or event with certainty, the impact of the pandemic is even greater on live event meeting planners and producers, according to Take1 Insurance Executive Vice President and Program Director Scott Carroll.
More details from Take1 Insurance (www.take1insurance.com):
“Unlike other challenges that have come before, Covid has changed the meaning of the word safe for every kind of event planner who now must try to do the impossible — anticipate and plan for the unforeseen,” Carroll said today. “We are in unchartered waters now, where the emergence of a variant in a remote part of the world that, today, has no effect on the event being planned but could completely shut it down in four weeks’ time. Event planning today requires more skills, foresight, and courage than ever before.”
Planners and producers must reconsider every aspect of the way they approach planning for an event, be it a musical performance or a corporate sales meeting, Carroll explained. “Not surprisingly, their costs are increasing along with their liability for the key elements that go into making an event a safe event in today’s post Covid world.”
“Basically, a planner’s ability to plan and cost with certainty has been shaken to the core,” he continued. “Many of the third-party vendors they used to rely upon may not be the same vendors they can rely upon today, either because they have left the business or because they are much more cautious when it comes to overextending themselves to not be ‘caught short’ when the unexpected happens. Everyone is seeking more guarantees and that is driving up costs across the board.”
According to Carroll, planners and producers must now ask a lot more of an event services vendor in terms of assuming responsibility for contract elements they have not been responsible for before, such as hiring talent and handling some logistics like the streaming of the event.
“Everyone is taking on additional duties,” Carroll explained. “Everyone is being brought in to the “design” phase of running a show. While this is being done as part of an effort to keep costs down, the reality is that these costs, and new costs, are increasing, forcing the planners to charge more. For the right event, we have not seen the top of the cost pyramid. The desire to gather in person is so great that consumers are willing to pay sums not heard of in the past. For events where attendance is optional because it can be streamed, for example, there is a tipping point at which planners/promoters may not be able to charge enough to cover the costs of hosting the event live, so they have to make up the difference with greater reach through streaming.”
Carroll emphasized that meeting the safety challenges of producing or staging a live event are being driven by civil authorities — states, municipalities, and government agencies — and not by new requirements being imposed by insurance providers.
“In many respects event safety as related to Covid, and other communicable diseases, is more related to satisfying the municipal requirement that would allow the event to continue. Cancellation coverage as related to Covid and communicable disease is virtually unobtainable now, so promoters have no recourse to recoup fixed costs from insurance if events are cancelled due to decisions made by civil authorities — and the very term ‘civil authority’ found in many standard contracts now takes on new and expanded meaning. A civil authority can undo all of the hard work of a planner in an instant.”
