ACC Belgium
The Event sector offers the government perspective for a restart of public life.
ACC Belgium|
26 April 2020

The events sector is one of the hardest hit sectors by the corona crisis: events were stopped first and risk being restarted last. We are talking about a sector with 3,200 companies, 80,000 jobs and thousands of freelancers, which in terms of annual turnover is in the top 15 of the economic activities of our country. The damage incurred is already estimated at € 5 billion (1.3 billion at the event organizers and 3.6 billion at the suppliers) and will continue to increase. At the beginning of March, the events sector united in an Alliance that represents the entire sector, incl.organizers, caterers, suppliers, ... and - despite the indescribable sacrifice for all companies - has worked hard and constructively on three domains that make up the sector. the government must offer perspective. 1. A substantiated file with support measures that is aimed at keeping the sector working and that the government will cost less money than an emergency fund. Support measures are proposed to give the sector oxygen to get out of this crisis while working. That in turn will have a positive impact on the national economy. 2. A recovery plan to restart the sector in 'the new normal'. This plan is being developed in collaboration with the Expertise Center of the Karel de Grote Hogeschool with numerous external experts and with the support of Tourism Flanders, among others. The plan consists of a risk analysis with all possible parameters, which maps the gradual and responsible restart of events - from the local neighborhood party to the mega fair - and an associated code of conduct. The code of conduct consists of very concrete precautionary and security measures for organizing all types of meetings and events. 3. In line with the recovery plan, we are also offering our knowledge and know-how to the government to restart other major economic activities and industries in this country. We offer the expertise of thousands of talented event industry employees who are now at risk of losing their jobs. They can be called in to ensure that the restart of public life proceeds safely. Many companies in our sector have already developed technical and logistics solutions for the healthcare sector in recent months. Today, this expertise can be used much more widely (think of trafficking, installing hygiene boats, etc.). It is important to realize that there are many types of events. People talk too quickly of mass events and festivals; nevertheless, the B2B sector is many times larger than the B2C sector in number of activities, but also in turnover, as confirmed by a recent study by the Public Impact expertise center of De Karel de Grote Hogeschool. The diversity of our sector must finally become visible to the government and the media. Hence this appeal to policymakers: we wish that more account is taken of the broad event sector and that the various working groups enter into a dialogue with us.

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