{"id":100445,"date":"2020-10-08T15:49:15","date_gmt":"2020-10-08T13:49:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.voyages-d-affaires.com\/?p=100445"},"modified":"2022-12-09T11:38:49","modified_gmt":"2022-12-09T10:38:49","slug":"interview-roucaries-unimev","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.voyages-d-affaires.com\/en\/interview-roucaries-unimev","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Pierre-Louis Roucaries Pierre-Louis Roucaries, Deputy Chairman of UNIMEV"},"content":{"rendered":"
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What is your reaction to the ban on trade fairs in Paris?<\/h3>\n

Pierre-Louis Roucaries -<\/strong> I confess our misunderstanding<\/strong>. With all the work that the industry, theUnimev<\/a> like its colleagues, has been working for months with government departments to ensure the most stringent health protection possible at exhibition centres and convention centres, we are stunned by the decisions that have been taken. You have players like Viparis<\/a> and the Cannes Convention Centre<\/a> who have had the measures they have put in place certified. For Unimev, we have established an extremely restrictive health protocol<\/strong> which applies to the whole...<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

What is your reaction to the ban on trade fairs in Paris?<\/h3>\n

Pierre-Louis Roucaries -<\/strong> I confess our misunderstanding<\/strong>. With all the work that the industry, theUnimev<\/a> like its colleagues, has been working for months with government departments to ensure the most stringent health protection possible at exhibition centres and convention centres, we are stunned by the decisions that have been taken. You have players like Viparis<\/a> and the Cannes Convention Centre<\/a> who have had the measures they have put in place certified. For Unimev, we have established an extremely restrictive health protocol<\/strong> which applies to the entire profession.<\/p>\n

So everything seems to be in place to ensure that trade events can be held in the best possible conditions...<\/h3>\n

P.-L. R. -<\/strong> It's out of the question to have a cluster on our events. As far as I know, none of the hundred or so that took place in September were clusters. We are specialists in flow management and we have been able to demonstrate the professionalism of our industry<\/strong>particularly during the attacks in 2015. The control measures needed to ensure the safety of goods and people were perfectly put in place during this difficult period. So why is our sector being penalised, when there are other flows of people elsewhere that are not always very well controlled? We don't always understand the logic.<\/p>\n

In Paris, trade shows are banned, but not conferences. Do you understand this distinction?<\/h3>\n

P.-L. R. -<\/strong> I'm not going to tell you that it doesn't make sense, otherwise they'll end up banning congresses too! Nevertheless, most congresses today also have exhibition areas<\/strong>. For an organiser, it's very complicated to run a conference without this source of funding.<\/p>\n

To my knowledge, none of the hundred or so clusters that took place in September were successful.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What impact has the pandemic so far had on the sector's business?<\/h3>\n

P.-L. R. -<\/strong> The entire industry, exhibition and convention centres, organisers, design and service agencies, everyone suffers in the same way<\/a>. Depending on the company, losses can vary from between -70 % and -90 %<\/strong>. You can keep up this pace for a few weeks, but over a whole year it's impossible. Unlike the other sectors, which have been able to get back to work, ours is the only one to have been closed for six months. At the beginning of September, and we still thought there would be a recovery, we estimated that the number of employees at the end of the year would be 32 billion euros<\/strong> the losses generated by the pandemic for our industry and the entire tourism sector, ranging from \u20ac15 billion for last spring to \u20ac17 billion for the autumn, on the assumption that the major international events would not take place. But then the smaller events scheduled up to the end of the year, whether international or national, also start to be cancelled.<\/p>\n