Ultimately, You Have to Decide

These are crazy times. How many people have said that? How many circumstances could you equate this statement to? How many different generations would say they’ve used it? Well, these are crazy times. In the Hospitality and Tourism Industry, I think it’s safe to say we have a corner market on crazy these days.

As I helped plan a 3-day in-person conference with trade show for 2000+ people 22 months after Covid-19 became a big deal and the world came to a stop, we’re still dealing with the questions: “Do we set this room for full capacity or leave extra room between chairs?”, “Do we wear masks or don’t we?”, “Do we check for vaccine status or don’t we?”, “Do we require a booster or don’t we?” What variant of germ are we on now?

Almost daily we receive questions about how we are handling masks. Someone is always dissatisfied with our answer. We get questions about whether or not we are requiring vaccines or not, again, someone is dissatisfied with our answer. We are a small organization with finite staff members, budget, and capacity. We need to do our due diligence, perform our duty of care, make a decision, and move on to the next 100 tasks at hand.

Ultimately, you have to decide what is best for you. Nobody can feel your level of fear of the unknown. Nobody can determine how comfortable you are standing next to another person with or without a mask. Nobody else can tell you if you want to hop on a plane and travel to be with others to learn something new, be with other like-minded people, and see some new products, or if you want to continue to watch a computer screen. Just you.

Please, do your due diligence, then, take responsibility for yourself. Those who plan events are weighing a myriad of factors and considering what is in the best interest of multiple stakeholders. What is not our job? Deciding for you if you want to attend an in-person event given the set if variables we are working with at this split-second moment in time. It’s not personal. It’s actually way bigger than that.

Have you had questions from attendees asking you to make a decision for them? I’d love to hear which ones you’re getting. Feel free to email them to me.

Please share this blog with others you know are planning events. We need to be able to share what we’ve learned with others and help our industry get back in the game.