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“ Our role is to help restart the wheels of commerce again in the various sectors in which we operate in the UK and around the world .”
Image : Brand Licencing Europe
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“ I feel we were responsible and fair to people and at the same time got to a place where we felt we needed to get to , given the total contraction of the industry in most of our territories . “ Our main focus is to get ready to gear up to be an event organiser at scale . The staffing levels we have are appropriately lean for where we are . But we also have maintained enough of the core staff to be able to ramp up quite quickly and capture the opportunities for live events as they come back .”
Moving forward to 2021 , McCurdy said that Informa will be ready to open their doors for business in July . But he cautions that the scale , in comparison with previous years , may feel uncomfortable .
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“ Given the remarkable progress that the UK is making in vaccine deployment and the steep decline of caseloads , I think that Informa and everyone organising exhibitions in the UK , need to be ready to re-enter the market in 2021 in whatever scale the sectors will permit . “ But restriction on border crossing and the possible inability of international exhibitors and international visitors to be able to get back home easily after a show , will have a significant effect on scale reduction . We are already seeing this in many parts of the world . Additionally , we are dealing with an economy that has been overall negatively impacted and that is most certainly a scale issue . |
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“ Overall , my general feeling is that if we can , it is our responsibility to come to market with an effective functioning show at the scale at which we can gather support . Our role is to help restart the wheels of commerce again in the sectors in which we operate in the UK and globally .”
Stephen Carter , group chief executive of Informa plc , was recently quoted as saying that virtual events , while playing an important role for the exhibition industry at the moment , will become significantly less relevant once physical shows are back up and running . McCurdy was quick to highlight the importance of digital but felt that physical events provide solutions that digital cannot .
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March — 29 |