Conference News June 2020 | Page 30

30 Big Interview Scotland Will Wait Neil Brownlee, head of business events at VisitScotland, tells CN how Scotland’s business events community is coming together during this time of uncertainty o corner of the events industry is unaffected by Covid-19, so to forge a path to recovery, regional convention bureaux are going to need to keep their stakeholders together. Scotland is a strong player both domestically and internationally, and if there is one example of unity to follow, you could do far worse than follow themю Neil Brownlee, head of business events at VisitScotland is tasked with shepherding the sector through this crisis, and as a destination, things are already looking up. Currently Q4 in 2020 is looking strong and 2021 positive further. VisitScotland reports 60% of association business across Scotland postponed into 2021 or future years, too. While setbacks are possible, you can only play the hand you are dealt: a nettle Brownlee has had to grasp. The impact Covid-19 has had on the events industry needs no further explaining, so now is the time to plan and think about rebuilding: how are you leading VisitScotland into the future? The first thing we did was to start planning for recovery before there was even a sign of one. That was important, as it enabled us to bring all parts of the business events community together across Scotland and let everyone know that we are here to support them; as difficult as it may seem, that they are not alone. We worked with davies tanner, our global communications agency, to develop a three-step communications plan and we are now in step two of that plan and moving quickly towards step three. All of our messaging so far has centred around #ScotlandWillWait, which shares positive news from our partners and key updates and advice from both VisitScotland and the Scottish government. It’s also there to build confidence as we look to rebuild for the future. I understand you have been talking regularly with your partners and clients, what are their concerns and how have you helped them? As soon as the true scale of the impact of Covid-19 on our industry became known, we set up calls with all our key delivery partners across Scotland. This included the main events cities and convention centres, agencies and DMCs, hotels and universities. This enabled us to find out exactly what was going on in their market, rather than rely on rumour and speculation, and in turn understand what support they needed. It also meant that we could share intelligence that we were getting from across our key markets, including the UK, Europe and North America. As part of our recovery planning, we have also set up some specific task forces, which again are designed to help key sectors within the business events community recover as quickly as possible. We also have a major new marketing campaign that we have been working on, and which will launch in the next couple of months – it’s something we had been working on well before the pandemic hit, and the sentiment behind it feels all the more pertinent now so we’re very much looking forward to launching that soon. Has there been any sign of enquiries or bookings returning, and to what scale? Currently Q4 of 2020 is looking quite strong, although that could easily change, but 2021 and beyond is looking incredibly positive. We have seen approximately 60% of association business across Scotland postpone into 2021 or future years. Where events have had to cancel, our partners across the world are showing resolve to return to Scotland at a later date, thanks to the relationships that have been developed over the years and the strength of the Scottish knowledge economy which continues to attract high profile events. The association market is a resilient one, which is shown in the enquires that are still coming in across the country for 2022, 2023 and beyond, and indeed from the rise in our ICCA rankings, which have just been released, showing that Scotland now accounts for 31% of the total UK association events market. Between 1 March and 27 April, we issued 65 unique proposals to www.conference-news.co.uk