Positive Hints In AVIXA’s Latest Weekly Pro AV COVID-19 Industry Impact Survey
May 4, 2020 by Dave Haynes
The latest weekly COVID-19 industry impact survey done by the AV trade association AVIXA suggests that while things are anything but rosy, they aren’t just steadily spiraling down.
The latest survey of AV pros and end-user suggests:
- The share of respondents saying they experienced no impact in the last week rose significantly.
- Of those professionals, healthy percentages indicated a resumption of some project work and a boost in business inquiries.
- Virtually no respondents say their companies have shut down completely.
- With a new month beginning, some have pushed back to July their estimates of a turning point.
The report continues:
After a week when AVIXA Market Intelligence’s COVID-19 Impact Survey indicated a plateau in business sentiment, we see hints that companies are eyeing a positive turn. Said one AV provider in the survey fielded April 28-29, “It took several weeks, but we are now actually getting calls from clients who are inquiring about how they can virtualize their events. People are hesitant to pick a date, but they are now willing to talk. Great first step.”
This week, the percentage of AV providers and AV end users indicating that the pandemic has negatively impacted their company’s business declined to 71% and 64%, respectively, down from 79% and 67% last week.
Significantly, it was a comparatively calm week for some AV providers, with 27% reporting no impact from the virus pandemic, up from just 19% saying the same the survey before.
Drilling down into the responses of professionals who say they’ve avoided negative impacts for the week, an increasing share can discern positive developments. Asked for the good news, 35% of AV providers that hadn’t seen a negative impact last week — including 57% of such providers outside North America — indicated they’ve seen projects resuming. Along those lines, 30% of such AV providers — including 61% outside North America — said they’d seen an increase in incoming business inquiries.
Similar goes for end user customers. There was a smaller number indicating no negative effects for the week, but among those, 28% said they’d seen projects resume.
“As with recent weeks, we have continued investigating ways to conduct our regular event production business in light of current social-distancing measures to include 100% remote presentation and limited in-person attendance, mixed with remote features for more guests,” described one AV provider.
“With the company having spent so many years in the face-to-face live event space, we are having to find new ways to break personal ground with remote meetings and events that I think is going to have a positive effect in the long run by expanding the services we can confidently offer clients, whether in the current era of social distancing or further into the future when those restrictions are lifted.”
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