COVID-19 has thrown up a huge challenge to the world. It has impacted every sphere of life and has upended activities across nearly all industries. Conference planners are particularly facing a daunting challenge.
The pandemic has forced the entire events ecosystem to try to come to terms with the virtual component as regards holding conferences which also comes with its set of challenges like taking into account the various time zones of the participants.
Everything is not lost amid the doom and gloom as ‘Coliseum’ proved that there can be opportunities even amidst tough challenges. Though ‘Coliseum’ had to postpone its physical conferences, nevertheless, the brand, per se, is in high demand. Our number of members grew to over 100 within a short span of time and our ‘Get in touch’-service is being used a lot within our member base (part of Coliseum’s 365Business Center). Our new projects database is also visited on a high frequency. ‘Coliseum’s’ latest product – ‘The Country Reports’, exclusive content only for our members – is very popular among them. Our diverse offerings – which are replete with variety, both online and physical – made us emerge stronger even amid the coronavirus crisis.
‘Coliseum’ is a global brand with international reaches within its physical events the world over. We have been closely examining, monitoring and evaluating the situation which has arose due to the global outbreak of
COVID-19 since March and we have been constantly doing so.
Coliseum’ founder and CEO Michael Rennschmied: “After extensive discussions with our members, speakers, sponsors and delegates, we have arrived at the following conclusions as regards our conferences:
Online conferences – Two of our conferences will be switched to the online format, only for 2020:
- Coliseum Online Week US 2020, October 19th-23rd
- Coliseum Online Week LATAM 2020, November 23rd-27th (inaugural event)
Physical conferences
- The 9th Coliseum Summit MENA will happen as planned – November 11-12, 2020, at the new Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi
- The 5th Coliseum Summit EUROPE (due to be held at Ascot Racecourse in UK on September 2-3) will be pushed to 2021 – March 24-25, 2021.”
“Holding physical conference is simply not feasible right now looking at the unprecedented health crisis globally”, Michael Rennschmied continues, “No one so far will be able to travel – either no budget, no permission or no self-confidence. And honestly, after experiencing traveling during corona times and seeing empty airports in Frankfurt and Dubai, I am very certain that it will take another six months until people will get back onto a plane.”
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