My Day as a Venue Finder During Lockdown: Planning Virtual Site Inspections

This morning started with 7.30am morning jog followed by a 8am virtual scrum with our team and a couple of venue partners. We eased into the meeting with few #dadjokes.. here's one: "Whats the difference between people who live in Dubai and people who live in Abu Dhabi? People from Dubai don't like the Flintstones, whereas people from Abu Dhabi do!"

I warned you #dadjokes.

Our morning meeting's main topic is today's Visualizer Visit webinar, specifically about Zoom webinar security and logistics. Just to let you know, I can't address enough the importance of always building a registration page and only allowing people that have registered to join your meetings. Just want to raise the awareness that Zoom meetings can get hacked pretty easily; if you share the Zoom password publicly. In fact #Zoombombing happened to us few weeks ago when we first started with the webinar series.

It wasn't funny in the business sense, at the time..A stranger invaded our meeting with clients and drew derogatory pictures all over the webinar screen. Took us a while to figure out that we can actually kick them out, but this guy brought an accomplish so both of them caused havoc, also by playing explicit rap music over our pleas to leave us alone. Heh. We learned our lesson on how to safely organise zoom meetings.

So back to the successful execution; we are currently running weekly virtual site inspections every Tuesday @ 11.00CET to various meetings & event venues, normally our team goes through MICE compliant, meeting planner recommended selection of venues from a database of over 248 000 venues and hotels worldwide. However yesterday we also invited properties to actively propose if they want to be co-hosts at our next week's session.

At Today's webinar we were honoured to have Melissa van der Sandt as our lovely co-host from M?venpick Amsterdam Hotel City Center located centrally adjacent to IJVenues and NEMO Science Museum.

I know this Amsterdam property very well as not long ago was helping to organise a 100 pax tech event in collaboration with an excellent event agency tenandone from Münich. This agency has also smoothly transformed into Hybrid and Virtual Event organiser during Covid-19.

All of our postevent feedback from M?venpick have been super good. Our clients shared very high praises about Floris Looij's team's attention to details and generally about the venue and service levels at the property. Therefore I can safely recommend it to our association and corporate meeting planners booking future meetings.

COVID INNOVATION Around The Area

An interesting little fact is that opposite from M?venpick you also have Mediamatic where the founder and owner Willem Velthoven has gone all out with the out of the box thinking, as you can expect from our Dutch colleagues; His team has implemented a safe dining area with small greenhouses around individual tables that protect the diners at ETEN restaurant. Certainly helps with maintaining the recommended hygiene standards!

WEBINAR AND REPEAT

Already preparing for the next week's webinar which will take us to Spain; we will be visiting beautiful Meliá Bajaras and Santo Domingo in Madrid and the gorgeous 7Pines Kempinski Resort in Ibiza.

So today I will also study more about Meliá's hygienic protocols; on how Meliá Bajaras is preparing for the reopening of business for small group meetings. I will be sharing more information during the webinar about some of the best practises.

Our mission with these webinars is to help meeting venues to gain trust, visibility and awareness that help our clients to make a decision to place an event there. With the help of 3D virtual site visits meeting planners can already plan around the facilities during travel bans.

Staying Informed On a Daily Basis

Every day I read several white papers, generally following several industry thought leaders and innovators, and current industry analysis' of what will be, official projected recovery timelines and meeting safety protocols.

Just came across United Nation's World Tourism Organisation (UNTWO)'s statement that 96% of all worldwide destinations have introduced travel restrictions since January 2020.

The UNWTO global review shows that the global regions are largely consistent in their response to COVID-19. Percentage of all destinations per region:

1. 100% OF AFRICA
2. 100% OF ASIA AND THE PACIFIC
3. 100% OF MIDDLE EAST
4. 93% OF EUROPE
5. 92% OF AMERICAS

World Health organisation has outlines hygiene protocols as a part of the hotel reopening measures: The COVID-19 crisis has evolved us to thinking ‘without guidance on the health and safety of travellers, there can be no travel, no sustained reopening of our businesses, and no revival of the economy," This applies to us all.

Whats Next

After getting inspired by Mediamatic writing an article about the step-by-step hygiene safety measures that regions globally are taking in order to lift travel restriction and sharing few viewpoints on what kind of solutions are available for the meetings industry during the recovery period of next 1-2 years.

Generally our clients are rescheduling their conferences to September onwards this year and larger citywide events are more likely taking place next year. i.e Dubai Expo just launched their new dates to 1st of October onwards in 2021. However early 2021 is also very populated.

Looking forward to sharing our virtual site visits during #PlanetIMEX virtual side events. Also hope you join our industry peers for #IMEXstillrunning solo 5K on 13th of May!

In the midst of keeping the relationships going and constant upskilling, I was both running and walking with our dog Brownie in between conference and telephone calls with meeting planners and venues from Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Finland, Denmark and Melbourne.

Days seem busier now than ever :) aargh.

Have a lovely day and hope you and your family and peers stay healthy! #runningsolo #togetherstronger #hospitalitystrong

https://www.dhirubhai.net/posts/360visualizer_postponedontcancel-hospitalityfirst-togetherstronger-activity-6663415429165268994-5SCw