Issue link: http://psai.uberflip.com/i/1377370
ASSOCIATIONINSIGHT Portable Sanitation Association International News BIWEEKLY EDITION MAY 26, 2021 Page 23 I'll Be Seeing You…continued from page 22 Continued on page 24 There's Data! With the loosening of restrictions around the world, I wanted to get to the bottom of what people are really thinking when it comes to meeting at conferences. I started doing research and I thought I would share some of what I found. Of course, my initial findings reflected what we all have seen over the last year, which is opinions are all over the map. I found some people saying they would be comfortable going to a conference right now while others saying they will wait a little longer to see what the summer brings. Geography also played a big role in how people are feeling about traveling and meeting. People in New York City and Los Angeles had thoughts differing from those in Orlando and Dallas. With all these different opinions, I was fortunate enough to find a survey in the Cleveland Business Journal that recently weighed in on this exact situation through a massive survey of hosts and conference attendees. This survey gathered the responses of 8,299 people across 44 markets who not only travel and attend conferences, but are the ones who organize and plan events. I appreciated this perspective and feel it is worth sharing with you. The survey was conducted April 5-7, 2021. Nationally, 50 percent of respondents said they are now ready to return to in-person events with proper COVID-19 safety precautions in place. Another 21 percent said they'll be ready in a month or two. Only 10 percent of respondents said they'll need six months or more before they are comfortable. Since this survey was done in early April 2021, and since then the CDC has changed its mask recommendations for vaccinated people, I wonder if this number would be different now. The survey also found 64 percent of respondents would prefer in-person events with between 25 and 100 attendees and around 32 percent were comfortable with up to 250 people. Again, in the month since this survey was taken, we are seeing indoor sporting events such as the NBA and NHL playoffs accommodating thousands of fans, I wonder if these numbers are evolving to reflect greater comfort with large gatherings. An important indicator that those numbers may now have changed shows up when looking solely at respondents who were already comfortable attending in-person events. In that group, there's a stronger interest in larger events, with 40 percent saying they'd be willing to attend an event with more than 500 people, compared to just 23 percent of overall respondents.