The Hospitality and MICE industry is counting down the days until the end of lockdown 2.0, but even if this happens as planned at the beginning of December, this Christmas Season will be completely different comparing to what we were used to seeing!
Social distancing rules, uncertainty, and limited corporate budgets mean that Corporate Xmas gatherings will be organized on a much smaller scale, if at all, as it is very possible, that not many employees would be eager to participate, to avoid the risk of contracting the virus just before Christmas and for others, well it’s a good excuse for them to sit this one out, just like the last 20 😉
While a lot of day to day corporate meetings were transferred to virtual space, the question is, could this be an option for these special Season get togethers? There are at least three different types of virtual Christmas meetings that come to mind:
- these organized for own employees, where the Management would summarise the year, introduce the plans for the next year and wish its employees Merry Christmas.
- meeting for Clients
- meeting for Partners
As we speak about the Christmas meeting, there is no doubt, this should be something special, ideally not another Zoom or Google Meet-up. Everyone is pretty tired of shouting ‘Sharon you are on mute!’ Or, ‘can you hear me?’
So, where should the Christmas Headquarters 2020 be?
The natural answer is the office, but… while most of us work from home today, who would be the one dedicated to make all the preparations?
The next thing is Christmas decorations, trees, lights, etc. Sounds easy when you look at beautiful pictures, but how many of us can professionally decorate the interiors? I can’t, even if I try hard every year…
Could this be an opportunity for hotels, to offer decorated Meeting Rooms, or Suites to local businesses to host their Xmas virtual gatherings? On top of having ”ready to use” professionally decorated interiors, there is an option to offer a Christmas lunch or dinner, for the Team, which arrives to record/ stream the meetings.
Seems like a win-win option, as hotels could sell their space, which probably will not be 100% booked this year (I wish I was wrong), and local companies could use beautiful hotels’ interiors to run their (virtual) events.
On a sidenote, why not offer decorated rooms for family photo sessions? Setting the collaboration with local photographers to attract more clients and share revenue? This year seems to be very much about collaboration and “help local”, so why not to extend this for Christmas, when we are more open to help and support others?
There is still this one very crucial component of this idea- Christmas decorations. As we know, it’s not an easy task, but there are plenty of resources available.
Happy Preparations!
Photo credits: @Christmas Decoration eBook created by Rowen Homes
Takeaway
The hospitality industry needs more of such positive examples of creativity and resilience. Only this week I spotted Royal Lancaster London Hotel Sally Beck and their Mixed Reality Studio and Weetwood Hall Estate | Hotel | Conferences | EventsSteven K. and their Podcast Room + Zoom Weddings ( yes, you read it correctly) Hotel KossakJoanna Ostrowska and their video events with beautiful city view. All these ideas made me think what else could be done, maybe on a smaller scale, so available for a wider group of hotels… and here is one option. Happy to hear hoteliers’ feedback but not only Thomas Finn would you use Xmas decorated hotel room for recording one ( or more) of your episodes :-)
This report was published first via LinkedIn