Published on : Monday, August 23, 2021
The Delta strain is dealing a hindrance to the convention industry’s fragile recovery.
With the increasing number of cases, some big gatherings are being shut down.
The situation leads to a fresh hit to a business that was already struggling to revive from the time of working from home and social distancing.
Due to the pandemic concerns, the New York Automobile Show was annulled for the second year in a row.
The North American Association of Food Equipment Manufacturers and the Global Surgical Conference called their events off in Florida which is the epicentre of the outbreak in the States.
The organisers of the Global Surgical Conference cited the dramatic surge in the number of cases in the state.
The Center for Exhibition and Industry Research reported that the industry has shrunken to $24 billion, down $77 billion from 2019.
Eric Kazatsky, a senior US Municipal strategist at Bloomberg Intelligence said there is not much distress right now for convention centre debt.
Many of these had pretty solid cash on hand going into the pandemic and decent credit quality.
About 1.5 million USD municipal bonds for convention centres have been sold so far this year.
The amount is down from 2.4 million USD in the same period in 2020 according to Bloomberg data.
Cooper Howard, Director of Fixed-Income Strategy at the Schwab Center for Financial Research, said that the impact of the pandemic on the convention centres is about looking at the liquidity and health of the region that they are located in.
Howard also added that right now the delta variant does not appear to be posing threat to this division.
In the long run, they will be watching.
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