Events Employment Crises’ Impacts and Resolutions (Richard N S Robinson and Yawei Jiang)

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to consider employment in relation to the broader events industry and crisis. In doing so this contribution homes in on two substantial research gaps in the literature. The first, related to the intrinsic interdependency between the events industry and the tourism and hospitality industries (Getz & Page, 2016), is that there is a well-documented academic and policy-maker ambivalence towards workforce issues in the broader tourism, hospitality, and event industries relative to other topics in these domains (Baum et al., 2016; Liu, 2018; Muskat & Mair, 2020). The second gap is that although there is a rich literature related to tourism and events recovery from, and resilience to, crisis and disasters, their impacts on workforce, and the role they play in recovery is ill-understood (Ritchie & Jiang, 2019). There is, however, also an interdependency between many of the entertainment, cultural and sporting industries and events (Getz, 1997). Almost without exception the global tourism (hospitality and events) and entertainment (cultural and arts) have been the hardest hit economically by the COVID-19 pandemic (Sigala, 2020). A focal point of this chapter, therefore, will be the consideration of not only direct event employment effects vis-a-vis crises but also the ripple effects on other workforces dependent on the ‘soft infrastructure’ that the event industry generates.