Newsletter

Be extra nice to each other during these times!

It will come as no surprise to anyone that the coronavirus pandemic has hit the travel and tourism industry hard. This includes Meetx too, which is why we want to share with you the impact that the current situation has had on our business.

Meetx is part of the Svenska Mässan Gothia Towers AB (SMGT) group, which itself is owned by the Swedish Exhibition & Congress Centre Foundation. SMGT has given notice to 300 employees, and a further 600 employees will be put on short-term furlough to varying degrees.

Meetx is currently using short-term furlough as a way of retaining as many staff as possible. We are convinced that the tide will soon turn and when that happens we will be ready to welcome clients once more.

SMGT and Meetx are following developments closely and observing the Swedish Government’s and the Public Health Agency of Sweden’s recommendations. The current government ban on public gatherings and meetings of 50 people or more, which is based on the Public Health Agency’s recommendations, means that we have to adapt and take an innovative approach to organising conferences.

Right now we are working week by week to come up with solutions and create the best possible scenario for each conference and fair. In many cases, this means postponing them until later in the year or until next year.

Meetx has 25 conferences that were scheduled to take place between March and June this year. The incredible understanding and flexibility of our clients and delegates, as well as the goodwill of our partners, has enabled us to reduce the number of conferences that have had to be cancelled.
As mentioned, in the vast majority of cases the conferences will be postponed until later in the year or until next year.

Here at Meetx we believe that despite all the recent anxiety and uncertainty more creative and innovative ideas will be developed to allow our industry to bounce back. Digitalisation is a critical factor in the conference industry too. For that reason, we have now entered into a number of partnerships with providers of digital solutions.

Together with our partner Adapt, we have developed solutions to enable conferences to take place digitally. As a result, we are able to help our clients to continue to get their message out there and impart knowledge, albeit in a slightly different format. This week we have a conference that is taking place at Adapt’s studio in Stockholm and will be streamed to a number of other Swedish municipalities. Finally, we are also planning a virtual conference, which is scheduled to take place in August. This involves one of our contract clients.

Please do not hesitate to contact us at Meetx if you would like to find out more.

If we look out for one another, we will get through this together!