Meeting and co-working space provider Convene in September began requiring proof of at least one Covid-19 vaccination dose and by October required proof of full vaccination before granting customers, attendees and employees access to its 23 locations in the United States. The Aug. 16 announcement set a precedent that showed event professionals how vaccination mandates—not just recommendations and testing—were not only possible for the meetings and events industry but also could be a best practice for industry recovery.
On Sept. 30, professional meetings industry organizations like the American Society of Association Executives and International Association of Exhibitions & Events announced they would apply vaccine mandate rules to its own conferences, emphasizing the industry would look to such rules as a best practice. Without venues that will include employee vaccination mandates in their own policies, however, customer organizations will have no control over vaccination levels among event workers. Simonetti closed that gap for Convene customers.
Convene’s move may have been set in motion by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s mandate for event venues, movie theaters, Broadway theaters and restaurants to require vaccination proof for entry. However, Simonetti activated Convene’s mandate across all its locations—and not just limited to the locations in cities that would require it.
That said, the decision to bar entry for unvaccinated individuals may have looked like a business risk to some venue executives who may be loath to enforce rules that would restrict in-person attendance for customers who already have concerns over low turnout rates for live events. Buffering that decision for Simonetti, however, was Convene’s confidence in its hybrid offering launched in 2020, which packaged the company’s professional audiovisual and production services to enable customers to manage and present events both in-person and virtually, dubbed Convene Studio.
These types of innovations—which began in 2020—on the meetings side of the Convene business have set a leading edge for the industry. While Convene serves both the meetings, co-working and real-estate clients, Simonetti has been adamant since its founding that the company is a hospitality business. As such, hotels would do well to watch this industry leader to see where it is making investments to serve meeting clients.