When will Covid end? For a few months, there seemed to be a speck of hope for event organizers and for the world at large. People began to see each other, and slowly the focus started shifting from hybrid to physical events. But as we enter 2022, our hopes are slowly dashing with the Omicron variant spreading rapidly around the world. Just not this, new variants and their mutations are being discovered at places leaving us with little or no hope for the physical events to take place anytime sooner.
Reports suggest only 10% of the total world population has been fully vaccinated. With such a slow rollout, and the emerging new variants, it will be a while before physical gatherings and daily activities like work from the office are normalized.
What is in store for the in-person events industry?
News reports and studies suggest Covid-19 is here to stay and it will become a part of our wider lifestyle. In-person events are a distant dream for event organizers considering the number of Covid-19 variants mutation now. This points out to the fact that safety measures are going to be top priority in 2022 too. Most likely, the virtual events platform will become the go-to format for event organizers.
However, hybrid events will also offer an opportunity to event organizers to treat their attendees with both physical and virtual experiences.
Can travel restrictions be gone?
2020 and 2021 was spent following Covid protocols while travelling with a lot of places shut for visits due to the highly contagious nature of the disease. But, people had eventually started having hope for 2022 and the easing of travel restrictions. If we analyze the situation today, travel restrictions are going to get stricter. Although people are travelling regionally, international travel is still banned in many countries.
This means businesses and offices are going to remain online for a while now. And people are going to stick to virtual meetings & conferences and even other events right now.
Will WFH continue for a while?
By the end of 2021, offices and businesses were looking forward to reopening and beginning work from the office. But, with the omicron cases rising, remote working is the only option left now. People have become comfortable with the work from home situation and reports suggest majority of job seekers are looking for permanent work from home conditions at their workplaces. With Covid restrictions getting stricter, at India’s capital, New Delhi and other metropolitan cities, the government has asked private companies to function on a “Work from Home” basis.
Perks of working from home:
I.
There is no stress of early morning or long hours of travel which most
people dread.
II.
There is a scope of spending more time with the family. In India, most
employees originally from smaller cities left their homes in big cities and
shifted back to work from home and be with their families.
III.
People have found flexibility in terms of time and space. Employers
too, have become accommodating with their approach to work from home.
IV. The pandemic brought in a lot of anxiety for everybody. The remote working option has helped a lot of people resort to self-care, focus on their mental health and deal with pandemic anxiety.
Restructuring of business strategies
The year of the pandemic sent shock waves across all types of businesses - be it large or small. There were disruptions, in businesses with consumers changing their behaviour according to the pandemic. Job seekers were looking for work from home options and reports suggest employees were leaving their jobs if denied remote working. These situations did put immense pressure on the opinion makers of big companies and they had to strategize their plans accordingly.
For a moment, nobody thought meetings and conferences or events could have been possible with strict Covid protocols. hybrid event platforms, artificial intelligence and digitization came to the rescue showing nothing is impossible.
With ideas and a zeal to tap into the possibilities during the pandemic, businesses and organizations began to reach out to their consumers via the virtual world. Along with this, social media platforms too, helped a great deal in maximizing their efforts.
By
analyzing today’s situation, as the world puts on a brave front against Omicron
and the other variants that are slowly emerging, we see a world that will
eventually bank upon the virtual world to run and at least profit in the
pandemic or post-pandemic world.
Resource: https://www.atoallinks.com/2022/what-does-the-future-of-events-look-like-with-omicron/