{"id":3045,"date":"2022-01-14T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-01-14T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/siteglobal.com\/time-to-stop-waiting-for-covid-to-go\/"},"modified":"2025-08-27T14:17:06","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T14:17:06","slug":"time-stop-waiting-covid-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/siteglobal.com\/blog\/time-stop-waiting-covid-go\/","title":{"rendered":"Time to stop waiting for Covid to go?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Debuting this month in <\/span><\/span>Conference & Meetings World (CMW)<\/span><\/span> are fresh insights from our own P\u00e1draic Gilligan, SITE\u2019s Chief Marketing Officer. In his entry, reshared from CMW here<\/a>, P\u00e1draic shares why he\u2019s giving the green light to a remarkable year of events in 2022.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

——————————————-<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t think anyone, even the late, great Nostradamus, would have predicted a year ago that 12 months hence we\u2019d be marking another Christmas amid uncertainty, another Shakespearean \u2018Winter of discontent\u2019.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Christmas of 2020, most of us were done with lockdowns but drew hope from the signs that, besides the baby Jesus and Santa Claus, a vaccine was also imminent, leading us inexorably along the road to salvation and redemption. Now we\u2019re wondering whether, in fact, we should have put more trust in the baby Jesus as the vaccine is proving less bulletproof than the science initially foretold.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sluggish uptake of the vaccine in some countries (you know who you are!) along with an unwelcome procession of non-consecutive Greek letters signifying further variants of the original virus, sucked out all the positive energy we felt at IMEX in Las Vegas leaving us disappointed, despondent and dispirited by the time we met again in Barcelona for IBTM World \u2013 just over two weeks later. Yes, of course, we made the best of it, as we always do, but behind the watery smiles and the gallows humour, we felt bad.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A week on from Barcelona and, do you know, I think the mood changed again. When this was originally penned in late December, I was getting ready to enjoy a socially distanced drink with a great buddy from Dallas, in town on a site inspection for a programme in late 2022. I\u2019d chatted earlier with a local DMC who told me that enquiries are way up, and that 2022 and 2023 are looking better than 2019 (their best year ever).<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m also involved in regular planning calls for SITE Global Conference 2022 taking place in Dublin this year (new dates coming very soon!) and while governmental restrictions forced a January postponement, organising has moved forward apace, full of Plan B scenarios. In other words, we\u2019re getting on with it.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that\u2019s the point, isn\u2019t it? We\u2019re living with Covid, working with it, working around it, working through it. Clients need to meet, to deliver their incentive travel programmes, to stage their conferences, to run their events. After almost two years of Covid, we\u2019ve developed protocols that previously didn\u2019t exist and we now know how to deliver \u2013 it might be entirely digital, it might be reduced numbers, it might be hybrid, but we have solutions and our industry is actively implementing these, tweaking them, refining them, but making it happen for our clients.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the pandemic, along with everyone else in the world, I developed an antipathy for the word \u2018pivot\u2019. More recently, I\u2019ve been getting the same negative feelings towards the word \u2018resilience\u2019. I\u2019m finding more incidence of its misuse than cases of the virus (and those daily cases are in their thousands where I live!) and everyone and his maiden aunt is talking about \u201cthe resilience of the human spirit\u201d. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But not me.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m simply going to call out what a remarkable species we are. We\u2019ve realised now that it\u2019s time to get on with it, and that\u2019s precisely what we\u2019re doing. We\u2019re not waiting for Covid to go away because it might be with us for a very long time. We don\u2019t have that long to wait. We have meetings to organise, incentives to arrange, conferences to stage, events to manage.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s just do it!<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Debuting this month in Conference & Meetings World (CMW) are fresh insights from our own P\u00e1draic Gilligan, SITE\u2019s Chief Marketing Officer. In his entry, reshared from CMW here, P\u00e1draic shares why he\u2019s giving the green light to a remarkable year of events in 2022. ——————————————- I don\u2019t think anyone, even the late, great Nostradamus, would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11869,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_views_all":23,"_views_30d":10,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[12],"class_list":["post-3045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-insights"],"custom_author":{"byline":"SITE Staff","byline_avatar":"https:\/\/siteglobal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/site-staff.png","byline_email":"","author_id":"473"},"yoast_head":"\nTime to stop waiting for Covid to go? - SITE Global<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Debuting this month in Conference & Meetings World (CMW) are fresh insights from our own P\u00e1draic Gilligan, SITE\u2019s Chief Marketing Officer. 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