Hartford Business Journal

16 HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM | SEPTEMBER 20, 2021 FOCUS: Meetings & Venues Delta variant complicates Greater Hartford events industry's recovery By Stephen MacLeod Special to the Hartford Business Journal H artford area events are slowly coming back as local venues invest in safety measures to counter the threat of the delta variant. Ben Weiss, general manager of the XL Center, Pratt & Whitney Stadium and Hartford Wolf Pack operations, said arenas he helps oversee have been able to draw back fans in more recent months. For example, he said season ticket sales for the Hartford Wolf Pack minor league hockey team are down only 10% to pre-pandemic levels, which is a smaller drop off than expected. Weiss said he expects attendance to grow as the season goes on based on engagements with fans. The team's first home game is Oct. 15 at the XL Center; fans will need to wear masks as Hartford currently has a mask mandate. Key to drawing people back to events, industry officials say, is consumer confidence. As such, local venues are investing in numerous safety measures to make people more comfortable attending live, in- person events. The XL Center and Mohegan Sun, for example, have both invested in ventilation and UV sanitization systems to keep air fresh and clean. Mohegan invested over $1 million in safety measures and XL invested a significant amount of time and resources. The XL Center vents much more outside air than it did before. UV lights, which kill germs and help purify air, line the arena's HVAC systems and escalator handrails. "We focused on high touch points in terms of making sure either we're physically cleaning [them] or utilizing technology to sanitize," Weiss said. But even increased safety measures haven't totally shielded the events industry from cancellations. Amid an uptick in coronavirus infections in late August, InsurTech Hartford announced it was pushing back a major insurance technology symposium scheduled for October to some time in the second quarter of 2022. The Connecticut Convention Center event was expected to draw around 1,000 attendees. Another area of concern is the COVID-19-related loss of hotel rooms in Greater Hartford. The situation is causing anxiety for event overseers who say the region needs a strong supply of rooms to remain competitive in attracting major events. Pre-pandemic there was a projected need to actually add hundreds of new hotel rooms in Greater Hartford over the coming years to remain economically competitive. Instead, the opposite happened over the past 12-plus months as leisure and business travel nosedived. In Hartford, for example, owners of the Hotel Bond/Homewood Suites and Red Lion hotels have opted to convert those properties to apartments, taking more than 270 rooms offline. According to global hospitality data and analytics provider STR, the Hartford market lost about 4% of its hotel room supply in 2020 compared to 2019. Play ball Outdoor sports is the strongest segment of the events market right now, particularly youth activities like softball and lacrosse, according to Robert Murdock, president of the Connecticut Convention & Sports Bureau. The Hartford Yard Goats just wrapped up its 2021 season, which included about 60 home games that drew hundreds of thousands of fans. Last year, the team's season was canceled. Pratt & Whitney Stadium hosted the U.S. Women's National Soccer team for an Olympic "Send-off Series" against Mexico in early July. The two matches drew a combined 44,000 fans, according to the Capital Region Development Authority. Murdock said sports have always had a strong position in the market. Sporting events have seen the fastest recovery in the meetings and events industry. Season ticket sales for the Hartford Wolf Pack's 2021 season are only 10% below pre-pandemic levels. Robert Murdock

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