Should we cancel our events that are scheduled for later in the year?
Avoid any knee jerk reaction to just cancel everything.
What organisations should be doing at the moment, is looking at the contracts they have with venues and suppliers as well as the terms and conditions your delegates and exhibitors have signed.
Understand what your contractual obligations are along with the financial implications and talk to all parties involved. Explore what options are open to you, venues may be willing to be flexible.
If your event has insurance cover, check whether it is covers cancellation due to a pandemic.
From there, you can work out at what point you need to make a final decision on the event going ahead, what alternatives you can put in place e.g. can you replace the event with a virtual offering?
Finally, remember to clearly communication revised plans with all stake holders.
A word of advice
Review the impact this pandemic has had on your current events and think about what you could do in the future to de risk the situation if it were to happened again. Have you got event insurance; do you have contingency plans in place? Dot-The-Eye can support your organisation in all aspects of future event planning. We support partners in both an advisory and hands-on capacity depending on their requirements.