Sam van de Kerckhof
President BAPCO

Belgian Association of Professional Conference Organisers
www.bapco.be

The feedback from most of our members is that, other than the obvious difficulty in obtaining adequate sponsoring budgets for certain conventions, the crisis is really visible in the general behavior of our clients: clear and outspoken attempts to reduce budgets at whatever cost, on site staff numbers are reduced drastically , etc.. As you can imagine, in many cases this results in sacrificing quality and proves that quality comes at a price!

We have also realized that “crisis” is a term more and more used as an excuse. Certain attitudes that are most of the time a reflection of a lack of creativity, are used under the pretext of ‘the crisis’ and that is a pity. A time of crisis should first and foremost be an opportunity to rebound, to generate new ideas, new concepts, maybe break the mold of a certain routine. But a crisis period as we know it today should also bring, more than ever, our endeavor to always strive for quality to the forefront. Let’s face it, professionalism comes at a price!