NZ industry event postponed even as Covid roadmap unveiled

Business Events Industry Aotearoa (BEIA) and Hawke’s Bay Tourism have announced the postponement of BEIA’s 45th Annual Conference in Hawke’s Bay until 2022 – a new official roadmap on dealing with the current Covid-19 outbreak having come too late to save this year’s event.
BEIA chief executive, Lisa Hopkins, and Hamish Saxton, chief executive of Tourism Hawke’s Bay, both considered that the risks associated with the current Covid-19 outbreak, as well as the continued lockdowns in Auckland and Waikato, and the uncertainty around travel restrictions, necessitated the difficult decision to postpone the conference.
“It was important to both organisations that we delivered on several key objectives,” Lisa Hopkins said yesterday.
“Firstly, to provide an opportunity for our business events community to come together after what has been a torrid two years. Secondly, to enable Hawke’s Bay Tourism to showcase their wonderful region. And finally, it was to provide thought-provoking content, which supported our theme of BEing Bold, Brave and Ready.”
The conference was to be held from 1 to 3 November. All delegates who have registered and paid for the conference will receive a full refund.
“We look forward to returning to the Hawke’s Bay region in 2022,” Hopkins said. “The teams are working on new dates right now and these will be announced soon.”
BEIA’s Annual General Meeting will still go ahead online, and a date for this will be confirmed shortly.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern this week announced a decision by Cabinet, which acted on public health advice, to transition Auckland out of current restrictions “carefully and methodically, with regular check-ins to ensure we’re continuing to actively control the virus”.
The emphasis has shifted to combatting and controlling the virus, and boosting vaccination, rather than striving for total elimination.

Three steps to easing restrictions have been laid out, with Cabinet reviewing each step weekly to ensure it’s safe to move before confirming the next step.
“At the end of these steps, we will then move to a national framework that reflects a more highly vaccinated population, allowing us the ability to deal with riskier settings such as large-scale events with the use of vaccine certificates,” Ardern said.
“Cabinet also agreed the rest of New Zealand will remain at Alert Level 2 to continue to support Auckland to do the heavy lifting – but the 100-limit cap on hospitality venues is removed. The requirement for customers to be seated and separated with physical distancing remains in place.
“Today we hit the milestone of 2 million New Zealanders vaccinated. It follows the doubling of Auckland vaccination rates over the past seven weeks, with 84% of Aucklanders having had one dose, and 52% now fully vaccinated. But there is more work to do.
“Vaccines were always going to change the way we manage Covid-19 into the future, but our strategy has worked and will remain – we want to control the virus, avoid cases and hospitalisations, enjoy our freedoms, and reconnect with the world,” Ardern said. 
Written by Peter Needham