In Australia the end of our financial year has come and gone being June 30. Business owners are busy closing off the financial year as is normal, but 2020 EOFY was a tad surreal with so many external and dominant influences taking center stage restricting the movement of tourism, events and human interaction. In late February 2020, we were flying along and looking to finish another strong year, but the travel and event landscape changed rapidly come March as we are all now adapting and preparing for how a successful event will be performed in the future.
Our head office in Sydney is once again being occupied daily by a small team with others working remotely. All our event personnel across finance have been incredible across this initial 4 month period, while undertaking courses, increasing their skill sets and remaining as engaged with our clients as we can be.
Being a natural observer of global events and the overall affect within the Travel and Tourism sector, some stories are perhaps worth re visiting as we all look for inspiration. With the current situation unfolding in Victoria, Australia appears to be the first test of endurance in this new Covid-environment which changes on the hour most days.
I regularly tune in to Martin Kelly who puts together a great overview, Travel IQ. The link below was a piece written a while back by respected financial journalist Allan Kohler. The numbers are staggering. They remain as such.
Understanding the complexity in the race toward a vaccine and whether it will be achieved in the short term remains the question that few can answer. We do observe Pharmaceutical firms will play a strong role as anticipated, and observe research globally are linking in and sharing results as best they can. The post on LinkedIn from former head of Medicines Australia and senior Pfizer Executive John Young offer a unique insight which I thought was one of the more accurate overviews I have come across.
I would like to reach out to all of our global friends and colleagues who are all dealing with different levels of disruption and health concerns. From Fiji to Finland, every single country is dealing with their health outcome while attempting to keep each economy turning over in a delicate balance as we are all trying to predict the timing of when we can all travel and interact with all freedoms returned. I have been keeping in regular contact with colleagues in the United Kingdom, Denmark, United States, Fiji, India, Indonesia and Thailand, and one observation remains evident - Countries and cities with a high population per capita and high density living such as NYC, Mumbai and Jakarta are doing it the toughest.
We are all looking forward to the creation of extended travel between New Zealand and Australia and sincerely hope the extreme measures both countries are undertaking will make this dream a reality before 2020 draws to a close. Note Auckland will have a new Park Hyatt and QT hotels to add in addition to the recent So from Accor.
On June 29, we also had a wonderful new addition to the family with our Senior Event Manager Lisa Cunningham and her partner Jared being the proud new parents of Abigail who is today 10 days old. Congratulations to the expanding Cunningham tribe.
Also congratulations to our Event Director Soroor Arabzadeh-Rogers and her new husband Jack who tied the knot in a small yet intimate ceremony in June.
I hope everyone is keeping safe and I look forward to seeing you all in person soon.