The New (Ab)Normal
I hate when I hear “the New Normal”, but I get it, I mean things are certainly not normal, and many things will never go back to the way it was.
In some cases, I think this is fine. I’m pretty sure restaurants, bars and other commercial businesses will be cleaner than ever in history and that isn’t a bad thing. I fly a lot and used to see Asian passengers flying with face masks, I am pretty sure that we will see people traveling in close quarters (planes, trains and public transportation) with masks forever.
Last week, we had to make a decision on whether or not we were going to go ahead with our August dates for Naughty N’awlins, wait another week to see, or re-schedule and something crossed my mind: What will the new normal be for lifestyle events? Will there be big changes? Will things ever go back to the way they were?
Many clubs and resorts are already open, but many are still closed and we fear will never re-open. It’s hard enough for a club to be financially viable when it is only open a couple of nights per week, many will not be able to afford the rent and expenses while shuttered and will be forced to close permanently.
We have already seen some pretty rapid spread of Covid at some of these parties and was the main reason that we decided not to move forward with our event in August. We simply could not deal with knowingly putting our loyal customers and fans at risk in order to make a buck.
It would have been an easier decision, had we not had full time employees, not to mention the other people that benefit from our event that are desperate for work, and count on our event as a summertime bonus for them and their families.
That is a lot of economic impact that will not be going into the pockets of local Uber drivers, bartenders, waiters, business owners and the impact will be sorely missed. Especially in a time when people are really struggling financially.
Tess & I have applied for everything under the sun, in an effort to keep our company afloat and keep our employees employed during one of the worse economic crisis in our nation’s history.
It doesn’t matter what your politics are, this crisis is hitting everyone and this pandemic is now touching every corner of this country. As it does, we realize that we will have to adapt and change in order to survive.
We had many conference calls last week in an effort to figure out whether or not we could move forward and if we did, what would that look like. We talked to city officials, our two hotels, the owner of one of the hotels, our bank, our merchant processor, the Convention & Visitors Bureau, other lifestyle industry leaders, valued customers and trusted friends. We could not make this decision alone and there were many factors for us to consider.
The hotel wanted to know our plans for holding a “lifestyle event” in the midst of masks and social distancing. How many tickets would we sell? What about dancing? Would there be playrooms? Would there be a parade? And so on…
With the bars now closed and a limit of 25 people per gathering, there was simply no way to move forward and we didn’t want to wait too long, so people could plan ahead, even in times where everyone’s plans are either up in the air or constantly changing.
The hotel gave us Oct 21-25 and we were just about to announce those dates when they told me that Nov 4-8 worked better for them. I was waiting for the new contract when they said only Nov 11-15 or 25-29 would work. Since the latter dates are over Thanksgiving, we had no choice to pick Nov 11-15, 2020.
Like us, the hotels have been on a roller coaster ride. Nov 4-8 was a city wide convention that had cancelled, which is why they gave us those dates, but then the event was back on and we had to pick new dates. The only thing constant, has been change and we have seen a lot of changes over the past four months.
So now we have a contract and we have new dates for 2020 (Nov 11-15) and we are moving forward with our event. It is our last opportunity to do an event in 2020 and so far, we are pleased with the initial response. We have had over 700 cancellations, but on the day we announced the new dates, 7 couples wrote to us to tell us that they wanted to change their cancellation to the new dates and we sold three new bookings within the first 24 hours. All positive signs in a time of uncertainty.
We know that if this event does happen as planned it will be:
Smaller than any event we have produced (in New Orleans) in the past 15 years.
We will have a lot of safety measures to put in place, following current CDC guidelines for November.
We will have amazing entertainment and fun times. This may be a smaller Naughty N’awlins than in recent years, but we will put all of our effort into this event like it was the biggest and most successful one ever.
We will finally get to see many of our favorite people. We miss hanging out with friends more than anything else.
We are O.K. with a smaller event while we move towards a safer country and a safer world. We actually look forward to not having 2,600 people to shuttle between events. It’ll be like a step back in time to the early days, except we know a lot more now than we did then.
We could have held a really small event in July and claimed that we “did it”, but we are taking the safe road forward, for everyone’s sake. As we get more successful treatments, learn about new ways to prevent exposure, see more and more people recovering from this, we will lead with safer and (we think) better events than ever.
Our first real trip (personally) is this weekend as we head to Temptation Resort to see the measures they have put into place. We will learn from our partners and we will help our industry by sharing information and helping clubs, resorts and events be safer and more successful.
We do not know what the “new normal” in this lifestyle will be, but we do know one thing… people need human contact. It isn’t a luxury it is a necessity. This break from hugging, kissing, dancing and loving others will be a needed reminder how important we are to each other.
We will never take what we do for granted, we will always be proud of what we do, but especially proud of our team and how we bring people together.
We look forward to seeing you on the other side.
- Bob & Tess