🔒Delta variant complicates Greater Hartford events industry’s recovery

Hartford area events are slowly coming back as local venues invest in safety measures to counter the threat of the delta variant.

Ben Weiss, general manager of the XL Center, Pratt & Whitney Stadium and Hartford Wolf Pack operations, said arenas he helps oversee have been able to draw back fans in more recent months.

For example, he said season ticket sales for the Hartford Wolf Pack minor league hockey team are down only 10% to pre-pandemic levels, which is a smaller drop off than expected.

Weiss said he expects attendance to grow as the season goes on based on engagements with fans.

The team’s first home game is Oct. 15 at the XL Center; fans will need to wear masks as Hartford currently has a mask mandate.

Key to drawing people back to events, industry officials say, is consumer confidence. As such, local venues are investing in numerous safety measures to make people more comfortable attending live, in-person events.

The XL Center and Mohegan Sun, for example, have both invested in ventilation and UV sanitization systems to keep air fresh and clean. Mohegan invested over $1 million in safety measures and XL invested a significant amount of time and resources.

The XL Center vents much more outside air than it did before. UV lights, which kill germs and help purify air, line the arena’s HVAC systems and escalator handrails.

“We focused on high touch points in terms of making sure either we’re physically cleaning [them] or utilizing technology to sanitize,” Weiss said.

But even increased safety measures haven’t totally shielded the events industry from cancellations.

Amid an uptick in coronavirus infections in late August, InsurTech Hartford announced it was pushing back a major insurance technology symposium scheduled for October to some time in the second quarter of 2022.

The Connecticut Convention Center event was expected to draw around 1,000 attendees.

Another area of concern is the COVID-19-related loss of hotel rooms in Greater Hartford.

The situation is causing anxiety for event overseers who say the region needs a strong supply of rooms to remain competitive in attracting major events.

Pre-pandemic there was a projected need to actually add hundreds of new hotel rooms in Greater Hartford over the coming years to remain economically competitive.

Instead, the opposite happened over the past 12-plus months as leisure and business travel nosedived.

In Hartford, for example, owners of the Hotel Bond/Homewood Suites and Red Lion hotels have opted to convert those properties to apartments, taking more than 270 rooms offline.

According to global hospitality data and analytics provider STR, the Hartford market lost about 4% of its hotel room supply in 2020 compared to 2019.

Play ball

Outdoor sports is the strongest segment of the events market right now, particularly youth activities like softball and lacrosse, according to Robert Murdock, president of the Connecticut Convention & Sports Bureau.

The Hartford Yard Goats just wrapped up its 2021 season, which included about 60 home games that drew hundreds of thousands of fans. Last year, the team’s season was canceled.

Pratt & Whitney Stadium hosted the U.S. Women’s National Soccer team for an Olympic “Send-off Series” against Mexico in early July. The two matches drew a combined 44,000 fans, according to the Capital Region Development Authority.

Murdock said sports have always had a strong position in the market.

“I’ve been working in this industry for a while. In 2008 and 2009, when we had the recession and a lot of things went away and money was short, people still went to their kids’ … softball tournaments,” Murdock said. “Instead of it being, one parent will go, now it’s the whole family’s going as a vacation because this is their vacation.”

Murdock said the events industry’s comeback from the pandemic is following a similar path to what happened after the Great Recession. Sports was hurt early on but is back to slightly below pre-pandemic levels. Concerts and conventions come next as they recover more slowly.

Business meetings are usually hurt the most by downturns and bounce back the slowest.

“I think that’s partly due right now to less people in the office and less corporate travel with corporations being a little more hesitant to send their people out on the road,” Murdock said. “Just the fact that people are working remotely more has changed that market.”

John Washko, vice president of conventions at Mohegan Sun, said business events activity is still slow, but companies moving to hybrid or completely remote workplaces could create a new market.

Since companies are seeing their employees in-person less, they may book more business meetings in the future “because they can’t develop culture on a Zoom call,” Washko said.

Washko said Mohegan is already talking to groups that have made hires during the pandemic and want to find new ways to help create worker connections to the company.

Meantime, the business meeting market varies by industry, Washko said.

Companies in the merchandise, food buying, real estate and supply chain industries are still holding events, while healthcare, tech and automotive sectors are less active, he said.

Travel also remains a challenge as some companies still have internal restrictions.

“We’ve got certain groups that are moving forward, certain groups that are blowing through their [allocated room] blocks,” Washko said. “And then we’ve got other groups that are coming in at 50% of their contracted room block, but still moving forward. And then ... we still do have some organizations that are not moving forward for a variety of reasons.”

Murdock said demand for business events is mostly focused on smaller meetings and retreats rather than full-blown conventions.

Conventions are recovering compared to last year but there is still a steep decline in events compared to pre-pandemic levels. Washko estimated that Mohegan has used about 50% of the rooms it did before the pandemic.

Looking ahead

The next booking season, spring 2022, looks stronger, according to both Washko and Weiss. Mohegan said that 2021 saw a 54% increase in events activity from 2020 and that 2022 is currently outpacing 2021.

However, both worry that the threat of delta could hamper the recovery. Mohegan noted that larger groups are comfortable booking in advance but the booking window for smaller groups has continued to shrink and become more short term.

“[Delta] could harm consumer confidence to come back out to large gatherings,” Weiss said. “We control what we can control here and that’s really what we try to do.”

The concert market is being particularly aggressive with safety measures. Some shows require proof of vaccination, or a negative test 72 hours before a concert. Current state COVID guidelines do not require masks, but do allow local municipalities or businesses to institute their own mandates.

The Connecticut Convention Center recently hosted its annual ConnectiCon pop-culture convention that required attendees to show proof of vaccination, or a negative COVID test within 48 hours prior to arrival.

Consumer confidence will continue to play a big part in the recovery.

“Planners more than likely are asking, ‘Are we going to get the numbers of people to support this event or should we postpone our event?’ ” Murdock said. “I think that’s sort of what happened all last year. People were, at some point, allowed to have events, but is it going to make money? Is it going to be worth the aggravation to have the event or not?”