ROME, MARCH 28 - If tourism is one of the sectors most massacred by the effects of the pandemic, the congress and events sector has undoubtedly received the strongest blow.
If during the last summer the beaches were still full and the mountain sector also had its relative satisfactions, there was an almost uninterrupted lockdown for the Meeting Industry.
To make the accounts is the Italian Observatory of Congresses and Events-Oice (promoted by Federcongressi & Eventi and created by Aseri-Alta School of Economics and International Relations of the Catholic University) according to which in 2020 the locations for events have experienced a decrease in turnover of 79%.
The data therefore positions the congress centers, congress exhibition venues, hotels, historic residences and other types of venues for events such as the most damaged companies among those in the tourism sector.
Based on Istat surveys, the reduction in turnover compared to 2019 settled at -37.2% for catering services, -54.9% for accommodation services, and -60.5% for air transport and -76.3% for the activities of travel agencies and tour operators.
In 2020, 69,880 events were held in attendance, with a dramatic -83.8% compared to 2019. The number of presences and days of activity of the offices were also negative.
Attendance was 5,847,330 (-86.5%) and the days of activity net of set-ups and dismantling 95,020 (-84.5%), equal to 24.8 net average days of duration of events per active site.
Almost 30% of the venues did not host any events.
The state of crisis has consistently involved all types of offices and all geographical areas of the country with a peak of 90.5% decrease in events hosted on the islands.
Many have equipped themselves to host hybrid events, that is events that involve a small number of people physically in the structure and an audience connected remotely.
An obligatory choice which, however, does not solve the problem and strongly penalizes the other players in the Meeting Industry chain (hotels, catering, fitters, transport…).
42% of the venues held one or more hybrid events: the locations that hosted the largest number of this type of event (67%) were the convention centers and congress exhibition venues.
By comparing the data collected to the entire universe, it can be assumed that about 4,900 hybrid events took place last year, equal to 6.6% of the total of 74,780 in presence and hybrid events.
The thing is even more worrying if we consider that the prospects for the reopening times are not at all rosy: the sample of locations contacted between December 2020 and January 2021 expected 67% to be able to return to hosting conferences and events within the first half of 2021. Of these, 17.8% planned to reopen in the first quarter.
As for the hypotheses of a return to the levels of events hosted in the pre-Covid-19 period, most, 63.8%, estimated a time frame of 1-2 years and 26.8% of 3-4 years.
"After more than a year of closure and inadequate refreshments - underlines Alessandra Albarelli, President of Federcongressi & eventi - it is of the utmost urgency that the government define the criteria for the interventions envisaged so far, a dedicated fund for the sector for 2021 and urgent planning of the recovery for a sector that generates a fundamental induced for the territories ".