The coronavirus (COVID-19) epidemic continues to wreak havoc on the events industry, with many more festivals and conferences cancelling and postponing in recent days.
One of the USA’s most well-known music and arts festivals, South by Southwest (SXSW), pulled the plug on its March event over the weekend – an order that was made by host city Austin due to the rapidly evolving COVID-19 outbreak.
“We are devastated to share this news with you,” a statement issued on the SXSW website says.
“’The show must go on’ is in our DNA, and this is the first time in 34 years that the March event will not take place. We are now working through the ramifications of this unprecedented situation.”
SXSW organisers said they were exploring options to reschedule the event and are working to provide a virtual SXSW online experience as soon as possible for 2020 participants.
Another world-famous music festival, Coachella, has been bumped from April to October, while here in Australia, Dark Mofo has been cancelled for this year over COVID-19 concerns.
Google has also been forced to change plans for two events, Google Cloud Next ’20 and Google I/O 2020, due to be held in April and May respectively in San Francisco.
The tech giant has turned Cloud Next into a “free, global, digital-first, multi-day event”, while all guests who have purchased tickets to I/O 2020 will receive a full refund by 13 March.
In the travel sector, Virtuoso has postponed its annual symposium, which was due to be held in Vienna later this month, until 2021; and one of the Middle East’s largest travel fairs, the Arabian Travel Market, has been moved from April to June and July.
To read more about other events that have been impacted by the COVID-19 outbreak, click here, here and here.
Featured image: Marco Verch/Flickr
