The Squeeze

Tell me if this sounds familiar… ambitions for 2023 are bigger than ever, after events world returned with a bang in 2022. But budgets are tighter because there’s anxiety around whether people will continue to be able to spend money on days and nights out. AND everything is costing more. Day rates are higher as people fight to pay their bills at home. Accommodation costs more as hotels increase staff wages to try and retain them in an already under-resourced industry. The price per head of feeding and watering a team on site has gone through the roof. etc etc etc, blah blah blah, let’s all give up and go home, shall we?

No. Let’s not.

Let’s face it, if we were going to give up and go home, we’d have done it two years ago. The people still in this industry after all the sucker punches that covid dealt us are the ones who really love it. And now is our time to prove our worth. To come at challenges from a new angle. To think creatively to get maximum return on investment. To work with clients (and suppliers) when it comes to maximising a budget, instead of fighting against them.

I don’t have all the answers. But with both a Coronation and Eurovision in the first half of 2023, the UK once again has the opportunity to showcase why its events industry is the best in the world. That will only happen if we break out of doing things the same ways we’ve done them for a million years and stop dismissing ideas because it requires too much effort to explore them properly. Let’s talk about those massive, imaginative, out-there concepts that you’ve been sat on for years. If not now, when?