AAXO news

It is time to reinvent and re-invest in ourselves

By Phetogo Kubheka, AAXO board member

It has been a long eight months for the tourism industry, with large-scale job losses and company shutdowns. Our members have felt the effects of Covid-19 and as a means to retain and revive the industry, as an association, we have been at the forefront of aggressively pushing for the events and exhibition sector to re-open. With precaution at hand, we want to ensure we reopen the industry safely in adherence to all new Covid-19 protocols.

As we scan the market, we realise that although several of our industry’s players have had to shut their doors, there are those who were able to keep their doors open. This encourages us that we need to reinforce our efforts to get back what we lost and partner-up where necessary in order to revitalise the industry.

Reinvent

What is essential going forward, for all our members and industry partners, is to look at how to reinvent themselves. Now more than ever, it is absolutely vital to adapt into a different form. This means relooking at the way companies package their deals, the way they market their brands, highlighting health and safety to their customers and mitigating their clients fears in order to secure those physical events in the future. This means ensuring quality is not being compromised at a risk of saving costs to counteract the additional operational expenses of Covid-19 protocol measures.

There are easy wins in terms of our industry to retain our current clients and gradually start attracting new ones:

• Have readily available packages for small events, as per legislated numbers, to ensure your clients are not still doing the research, but rather that you have done the research for them, making you the obvious choice as everything has been set out for the client (Package A – 50 pax, Package B – 100 pax etc.)

• Since PPE is an essential item for all engagements, not just for buildup and breakdown of events, find a way to provide this as a free value-add to your client for the next event. Partner up with a supplier and put in place a trade exchange to facilitate this. Noting that there could be a second wave of infections, as we’ve seen in Europe, start planning now for the future should this happen.

• Re-purposes of venues to leverage potential loss of business

- Renting out parking space to personal trainers for their one-on-one sessions with private clients who don’t want to go to the gym or open up their home to a stranger

- Hiring your kitchen facilities to chefs or vetted catering companies who work the graveyard shift in order to service their clients’ lunchtime deliveries before they go to their regular day work

• Re-looking at cancellation clauses, as we don’t know what the future holds; but one thing for sure is that we want those clients to remain with us and especially to look at SA as their events destination

• Consideration of value-added orientated vouchers to be used at a later stage to encourage postponements rather than cancellations

It is imperative that we inform and guide our members as we all navigating through the ‘new normal’. AAXO in partnership with other industry associations, now forms part of the national body called SA Events Council, whose aim is to create, test and educate the industry about the new Health and Safety Guidelines that will shine the light on how to reopen the industry safely.

Re-invest in your staff

As we prepare for the new era of our industry, it is important to re-invest in our current staff. This does not have to be a costly exercise. Look at industry online training webinars, free online courses specific to enhance your staffs’ soft skills as well as industry online group sessions. Secondly, look at internal training. It does not take much to bring your sales and operations team together for a two week learning engagement. This allows staff members of both departments to learn each other’s roles and understand how the departments work and how their performance has an impact on the other department and to what degree. This aids in upskilling your staff to make better decisions and perform better as they become well informed and physically understand their individual importance in the supply chain of the company’s event production cycle. This will allow for better productivity.

Investing in human capital today, especially during this quiet time, will plant confidence in your staff to go beyond just what they are hired for and not just the notion of sticking it out because they have nowhere else to go due to no jobs currently in the industry. This will rather instil loyalty and ignite the creative side of staff to allow them to think of ways to improve the company processes as we gear up to reopen the industry. You will probably notice staff finding new ways to create inhouse events owned by the company as a means to bring in more income and secure their long-term future within the company.

September sales training session

AAXO held an exclusive sales training session lead by the world renowned Andy Preston in September this year. As a means of giving back to our members, the association provided this training for free to all its members, domestic and international. What was evidently clear from the training was the element to also re-look at how companies sell themselves, especially to the new kind of post-pandemic customer. Other golden threads that also came through the training was upskilling and feeding your staff with industry information. As you invest in your staff, you will slowly bring about the growth of what Andy Preston calls ‘Professional Opportunity Spotters’ for your company. This will be much needed for any company as we spearhead to tackle the new normal.