Planner Resilience: Melissa Falendysz, NATP

How were you able to adapt during COVID-19 when the meeting and events industry got disrupted?

Since our live events had already been contracted for 2020, our hotel partners were very understanding and graciously helped us reschedule our event for future years. It’s been very beneficial to have those close partnerships and be able to help each other through such a chaotic time for our industry. It may be cliché but we truly are “in it together”. Although COVID-19 created MANY issues, it also opened our eyes to the endless possibilities of the virtual world that we haven’t explored before.

NATP strives to continuously be a reliable resource for all tax professionals so we wanted to make sure to adapt to their needs in any way possible. Our members turn to us to keep them educated on the most up to date tax law changes, which were plentiful due to COVID, we were constantly hosting free webinars to bring that extra value to our membership. We hosted our first fully virtual, multi-day conference at the end of July and it was very well received! It was a great opportunity to try out a mixture of live and recorded sessions, real-time chatting with the speaker in addition to live face-to-face Q&A after their session. We ended the year with a total of 5 robust, multi-day virtual events and gained priceless experience creating all of them. It was a quick turn around for each but it made us cognizant of how we can amplify our educational offerings from here on out.

This post is part of the HopSkip Planner Spotlight Series where we celebrate the positivity and optimism shown by planners across the industry when navigating the turbulent waters that COVID-19 has brought the meetings and events industry.   Keep an eye out as we release more stories like this over the next few months.