Events Industry vs Covid-19
The events industry has been hit badly by Covid-19 which caused a number of events to cancel since social distancing was introduced by the prime minister Boris Johnson on 23rd March 2020. Since the announcement all events taking place from that date until May has been cancelled, events such as festivals, sporting events, corporate events and any other event. You will see online that a number of events that are due to take place in June 2020 straight through to December 2020 are still going ahead in the hope that social distances measures decrease the number of Covid-19 cases and social distances measures are relaxed, which will hopefully enable the events industry to open back up and get back to business.
Major festivals that have cancelled so far are Glastonbury, Isle of wight and Download festival just to name a few. These festivals were due to take place in June and Glastonbury in July. Now you might be asking why have these festivals cancelled so early, Glastonbury takes around 3 months to build and complete by their show date in July so as you can see with the social distancing measures in place this would not be possible. Some festivals can take a few days to build where most medium size festivals take around a month to build, these are the festivals that are holding out to see what happens in the next few months whilst some festivals have rescheduled to August and September.
Even though some organisers from the events industry have not cancelled their events as yet or have rescheduled to a later date, there’s still a good chance these events might not take place and Covid-19 can potentially cripple the events industry for the rest of 2020 and may cause many festival companies to go bankrupt. Let’s say the government lift restrictions in the next few weeks or months and relax on social distancing, they may still put a limit on social gathering which will affect a lot of events.
Event is cancelled do I get my ticket money back
If you have already purchased tickets for an event you should go to the event website and see if they have updated their website with information regarding what your options are regarding a refund. Some festivals are offering full refunds or the option to keep and use your ticket for the rescheduled date. If you choose to opt for a full refund do bare in mind that your booking fee and postage will not be included.
If you do not hear anything back after a few weeks, make sure you follow it up says consumer rights journalist Helen Dewdney. We say a few weeks just because of the high volume of refunds or inquires they will be facing at the time.
Make sure you do everything in writing/email so that you have a record.
If you still are not getting anywhere contact your credit card company if the value is over £100 as you will be entitled to a full refund. Even if the ticket is worth less than £100, or a debit card was used instead, there is still the chance of getting a refund under the chargeback scheme. This is used to reverse the transaction.
If the event is still going ahead but the hotel you booked is closed, getting a refund from the event might be impossible because from the organiser point of view the event is still going ahead. If you’ve booked a package (with hotel, flight and event entry all included), you may be able to claim under your travel insurance depending on the small print.
How much is the UK Events industry worth
Just to give you a quick rough figure of how much the events industry is worth on a yearly basis. Remember this is a rough figure. The UK’s events industry is worth roughly worth £42.3 bn a year with top 10 UK event agencies turning over roughly £3.5 bn a year, average budget per event is around £65k in UK. So as you can see there are big numbers and a lot of money to be made in the events industry. The UK also host over 7000 major outdoor events each year.