As the number of coronavirus cases continues to grow, the events industry is starting to take a hit.
A number of conferences, conventions and trade shows around the world have been canceled or postponed as attendees and organizers voice concerns about coronavirus. In Europe alone, 260 conferences have been canceled due to coronavirus, said Sherrif Karamat, chief executive of PCMA, a trade association representing the business events industry. Most of those were located in Italy.
Already, the virus has killed more than 3,000 people, more than 2,800 of whom have been in China’s Hubei province. On Tuesday, the U.S. death toll from the coronavirus rose to nine.
Over the last 20 years, the conference and convention industry has expanded rapidly, in line with the growth in world economies and markets. In 2017, global business events generated about $1 trillion worth of direct spending, including funds to plan and produce the events and related travel, according to an Events Industry Council report.
There will be “significant impact” on the conference industry this year due to coronavirus, said Nick Vyas, executive director of the center for global supply chain management at USC Marshall School of Business. “It’ll disrupt the ecosystem supported by the trade shows and conferences.”
So far, these are some of the events that have been canceled, postponed or turned into online-only events.
- Mobile World Congress, Barcelona, Feb. 24-27
- Trans-Pacific Merchants, Long Beach, March 1-4
- American Physical Society meeting, Denver, March 2-6
- Natural Products Expo West, Anaheim, March 3-7 (Conference organizers say the event is postponed and that next month, they will announce a new date.)
- Geneva International Motor Show, Geneva, Switzerland, March 5-15
- Facebook Global Marketing Summit, San Francisco, March 9-12
- CERAWeek, Houston, March 9-13
- Game Developers Conference, San Francisco, March 16-20 (Conference organizers say the event is postponed until summer.)
- Livre Paris book fair, Paris, March 20-23
- Nvidia GPU Technology Conference, San Jose, March 22-26 (The conference will now be an online event.)
- Bologna Children’s Book Fair, Bologna, Italy, March 30-April 2 (rescheduled for May 4-7)
- Google Cloud Next ’20, San Francisco, April 6-8 (The conference will now be an online event.)
- Facebook F8 conference, San Jose, May 5-6
- Google I/O, Mountain View May 12-14
