Peter Jones assesses the Victorian Roadmap

Hope for the best but expect the worst. The proverb kind of sums up the Victorian roadmap released yesterday when it comes to events.

About the only mention of something resembling an event were weddings and funerals and I really can’t see a rush on October 26 – certainly nothing before then – for an outdoor only wedding for 50 people at one per four square metres.

Then it’s early November for up to 150 people indoors but still at one per four square metre, which we all know is not viable from a cost effective and guest experience perspective.

There is talk about people at the Melbourne Cup but that is a different story and has its own issues about crowd density.

At the moment there is no discussion about any form of corporate/business event but you can assume it will follow a similar path to what has already been outlined. So, in reality that takes us to December at the earliest whilst at the same time they are predicting a peak of around 4,000 cases per day.

Anyone prepared to run a corporate event with that fact dominating the news? I wouldn’t think so, not to mention what density guidelines will still exist and how the proposed vaccine passport is going to be in reality.

Who is ultimately going to be responsible for the vaccine passport – the venue, the client or the event organisers? Probably a combination of all three.

But that’s just one of the ongoing issues we are all going to have to address some time sooner rather than later.

In the meantime, with December and January out we have to assume that February 1^st really becomes our start date for any meaningful corporate and business events to return.

And that gives us to the end of October to plan, otherwise the first quarter of 2022 will be a write off before we know it.