The day the skies went silent

Unless you lived on Mars for the last couple of weeks you cannot have missed the turmoil that one single volcano - with an unpronounceable name - in Iceland brought to the world. Total disruption of air traffic in large parts of Europe, passengers stranded all over the world, lives disrupted at all levels, economies suffering: that’s in a nutshell what Mother Nature served up in one big cloud.

Consequences? Of course there have been and will continue to be many impressive consequences. Short term we all lived the consequences, everybody in the industry has at least one story of cancelled groups, stranded clients, difficult evacuations, but what does it mean long term for our industry?

The most visible ‘sufferers’ throughout the whole volcano crisis were of course the airlines, the most crazy figures have circulated the last couple of weeks on the losses incurred by all airlines, the number of zero’s was impressive. An already ailing industry came out of this debacle as a boxer on the ropes: groggy and nearly out for the count. The good news, at least for the European airlines is that if needed, they are allowed by the EU to ask their home countries to help them out financially even though they are strongly urged to refund passengers as much as possible.

But the consequences go of course much further: hotels, transportation companies, DMC’s, PCO’s restaurants,…all suffered and continue to do so.
“Clients have become much more careful in their planning and cancelled trips & conventions have not necessarily been postponed to a later date. During the shut down there was a rush on video conferencing and conference calls. In Brussels alone the demand for conference calls was so high one day that the whole system simply shut down…total melt down! It underlined once more our total dependability on high technology and our inability to cope when one cog of the well-oiled machine breaks down…” says Sam van de Kerckhof of BAPCO.

“I very much regret the fact that the EU did not seem able to come out with a joint communication during this matter. Each country was left to fend for itself, there was no coordination and the end user, the traveller – although very understanding and patient – was the one to suffer because of a lack of a joint European standpoint. Rumours we had plenty of, good solid communication was hard to be found” regrets Elie Lores Blanes, former SITE president.

Both Raymond Desmet, President of Initiative and Christophe Verstraete of euromic remarked, when asked on the sense of solidarity that could be found in all branches of our industry, that especially in Belgium the suppliers handled with remarkable restraint and flexibility about cancellation procedures. All put in extra hard work to find solutions at all levels for their clients.

Belgium’s own volcano eruption – the Belgian government

In the meantime Belgium had its own volcano eruption when – once again – our government toppled over a linguistic matter and this only 2 months before Belgium takes up the Presidency of the EU….bad planning is the least one can say!

It is deeply saddening to see a small group of politicians who at the end of the day – and with very few exceptions – are only interested in their own jobs and more specifically the perks & power that come with their jobs put a whole country in jeopardy for the sake of their own oversized ego’s. They have, in our opinion – and we know many think alike – once again displayed a total disregard for the people of this country and worse for the economical consequences of their infantile bickering.

Consequences? You can rest assured that the image of our country abroad has once more been tarnished and even ridiculed and this will directly impact our industry.
“Why can we not follow the example of Switzerland, that has to contend with even more federalism than Belgium, (4 languages!) but to the outside world they can present 1 unified image?” asks Hugo Slimbrouck of ABITO. “We think more and more regionally, which is ok INSIDE the country, but gets tricky when that is the image presented to the rest of the world.” He does see light at the end of the tunnel and speaks positively about the efforts made by Toerisme Vlaanderen towards the future. He pleads eloquently to use the Meeting Industry as the showcase for promotion to the rest of the world.

Sam van de Kerckhof, president of BAPCO, is closely involved in the organization of a number of the over 200 meetings and events planned during the Belgian Presidency and regrets of course this additional stumbling block to the promotion of our country. “Thank God, a number of the meetings are actually being presided over by regional ministers; this lessens the impact of the changing federal government. However, let’s be clear, this is a worst case scenario and what should have been a 6 month showcase of a great little country has become a farce before it has even started.”

On Wednesday 28 April we saw the presentation of an excellent film made to promote our country, the Presidency was to be our calling card and our moment to shine, now all of this comes under a cloud…not of ash , but of insecurity and ridicule. A bumbling nation that cannot even get an agreement on the organization of a small part of its territory (Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde) …let’s face it our politicians have not done us any favours and it’s a shame that all the concerted efforts made over the years by the whole of our industry, can be negated in such a short time by a bunch of political egotists only interested in their own pockets and with a very, very short term vision.

But to end on a note of optimism, and as many of the people we spoke to for this article actually believe, we Belgians are a sturdy lot and we have proven time and time again that we are resilient and inventive! We will definitely fight for our destination and our Meetings Industry, with or without the politicians….let us hope though that they – finally- get the message and start thinking to sustain our moneymaking industry rather than sabotage it!

….We know… we can have dreams no…?