Safe Meetings

As meeting planners and hospitality professionals, our first priority has, and always will be, taking care of the safety, well-being, and health of our attendees. To that end, ALHI is committed to providing guidelines, tools and best practices to assist our colleagues in planning safe and engaging meetings as we all continue to navigate COVID-19.

As we bring meetings back, it is of the utmost importance that we are all up-to-date in regards to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines, and that we design events that take these guidelines and protocols into account. We also sourced the diligent work of the Events Industry Council (EIC) APEX COVID-19 Business Recover Task Force.

The guidelines provided here are a result of nine face-to-face events in cities across the U.S. since July 2020, planned and executed by Katie Bohrer, CMP, ALHI Vice President, Meeting Design & Experience. We are committed to updating these guidelines as CDC and WHO guidelines evolve so we can be sure to maintain the highest level of compliance and safety considerations in our meetings.

As we continue to navigate COVID-19, here are two rules of thumb to keep in mind for every event:

• Ensure a minimum of six feet of distance in all furniture set ups, meal functions, session designs, line queues and elevators
• Provide signage throughout the venue and in meeting spaces that reminds the group of guidelines, mask protocols and a minimum of six feet distancing

Peggy Fritz, an Events Services Supervisor at Toyota North America, attended the ALHI Back to Business Experiential Forum at Omni Dallas Hotel in August. "We're in this to build trust and confidence as we return to face-to-face events, and as we have our planning groups, and our agencies and our hotel partners working together, a lot more of these simple but really impactful ideas will come to the surface and benefit everyone."