As one of the UK’s leading Venue Consultancies for 15+ years, GFG Consultants alongside many other event industry-leading experts has never seen such a decline in ‘live events’ than there has been over the last six months!

Having advised many of London’s leading venues’ Events teams to deliver increased efficiencies in their day-to-day operations including how they position their ‘venues brand’ in London’s incredibly competitive marketplace, next year’s fiscal business planning will need to start early.

As Museums and Conference venues begin to open their doors to the public and with the Government furlough scheme concluding at the end of March, re-engaging with the corporate market will need to be thought through very carefully. There are so many factors which will need to be reviewed and considered – upon arrival with delegates registration including ‘body temperature’ monitoring and track & trace, to people flow management, serving refreshments and lunch breaks as well as visiting the cloakroom facilities, to name but a few.

With the uncertainty on when a vaccine will work, alongside the challenges for the NHS to ‘roll out’ a vaccination programme to cover the UK population, one of the biggest issues for Events teams will be projecting future revenues from their various sales channels. The events market will never be quite the same as venues adapt to delivering ‘hybrid events’, the latest ‘buzz’ word and hot topic within the industry!

Virtual events are now taking over from your traditional F2F Sales kick-off conferences, regional meetings, product launches, symposium, experiential events, etc. So, what do we mean by ‘virtual events’? It’s all about quality TV broadcast, 4K cameras with either in-house editing or streamed via a production company. In future, connectivity and broadband speeds will become the key concerns for both venues as well as event organisers…

Putting aside the fact that most companies are prepared to allow staff to continue working from home until the end of the year if not longer, the traditional format of venues hosting large scale Conference and Exhibitions will certainly need to change for the next twelve/eighteen months!

So what is the solution and how should venues adapt to this changing environment? Although long term it will be very positive for the industry!

As an independent consultancy advising many venues, there are three traditional business models available when delivering a ‘Live Event’ including production, stage, set, sound and light: –

In house – where the venue invests significant capital expenditure into equipment and employs a technical engineer

Outsource to a sole production company on a fixed term contract who will not only provide the crew, but also invest in the venues meeting space by installing and regularly updating with the latest equipment

Have a list of preferred AV/production suppliers who will provide the complete solution by bringing in their equipment on-site

In London, there are many professional and experienced established companies in this field from Fisher Productions, White Light, Event Concept, Eclipse, Wise productions as well as many newcomers who have just entered the market, namely Lightning Events and Ash Event Productions to name but a few who will certainly be struggling in this current climate.

However, while many of these companies are idle with furloughed staff, the ones who will survive and prosper post COVID are companies who are investing in the latest technology using the latest innovation to deliver digital solutions.

In recent months I’ve become aware of a company who has created a platform called ‘SmartStage’ which can be installed in a space as small as an office. In simplistic terms, this technology is an ‘immersive video environment which replaces the traditional green screen element of a virtual studio and allows the presenters and audience to see and interact with the content around them’.

Although not in the true sense a ‘hybrid event’ which involves a small live audience, this platform allows the host to deliver a 360-degree virtual studio environment which is visible in real-time, enabling the presenter to interact with the content in a far more natural way.

Then if you’ve ticked ‘all those boxes’ you should have a team who are fully committed to achieve your vison and help you achieve your business goals.     

As their Technical Director said

“As the industry is gearing up for a return to the delivery of events, hybrid solutions will undoubtedly be the format of choice for many organisations. While many of the venues will have facilitated hybrid elements of events in the past, a rapidly increasing adoption of this format presents a range of different options.”