Gary FitzRoy has had plenty to say about the situation we find ourselves in as an industry. He went on to create yet another industry association – the National Events Alliance.
The NEA held a meet up at Sydney Showground last month and ASE took the opportunity to sit down with Gary for a chat.
July 8, 2021
1 Comment
on Gary FitzRoy on the state of the event industry.
We have staged 16 events (yes 16) under a strict Covid Safe Event Framework between July 2020 and the first week of July 2021. Two weeks ago, and two days into bumping in for an event (Farm Fantastic) at Caboolture, north of Brisbane we had to shut the event down due to a 3 day Covid Lock Down in Queensland. Even though we have now postponed the event to later in the year that lock down cost us around $ 120,000. The Queensland Premier said that they will only give assistance to affected businesses if it goes past a 7 day lock down.
The $50M package has been a disaster and did nothing, zero, zilch for consumer events. It was poorly conceived and badly managed… that is of course unless you had an affiliation or close working relationship with Austrade or BECA. We applied and received approval for 3 events under that program and the exhibitors and patrons received nothing and nor did we. Nobody followed us up or surveyed us as to how it was going and when we complained they all ran for cover.
Because we have staged more events than any other company in Australia since Covid hit I would have thought that at some stage we may have been called upon to contribute to the design and implementation of a rescue or support program. Despite offering, we were never called.