As a result of the uncertainty that remains in the wake of the Covid-19 crisis, HIX has made the decision to postpone its debut event until 2021…
2020 has been a painful and frustrating year for the events industry. Within the realms of hotel design, Salone del Mobile, the Independent Hotel Show, Clerkenwell Design Week and Hotel Designs’ much-loved networking events have all been indirect victims to the virus.
While the pandemic continues to force travellers from certain regions to quarantine and while businesses are encouraged to adapt to new social distancing guidelines as measures to prevent Covid-19’s spread tighten once more, there is heavy sense of uncertainty in the air. HIX, an ever-changing design experience that was expected with high anticipation to launch this year, has released an official statement announcing that it will postpone the debut event until November 2021.
“We made this decision based on uncontrollable factors but just one question: ‘can we guarantee a brilliant HIX experience this year?’ – HIX.
“It hurts to write the above statement because we are still buzzing from our launch and [we] feel a huge sense of gratitude for your support in making HIX London’s only hotel design event… all in the space of six months,” the event organisers expressed in the statement. “We made this decision based on uncontrollable factors but just one question: ‘can we guarantee a brilliant HIX experience this year?’ The potential implications of the uncontrollables made it impossible to answer that question with a confident ‘yes we can!’
“So we made the call; despite our own sense of adventurous optimism, despite the Government announcement for events to go ahead from October and despite our exhibitor’s consensus view of ‘if you guys open this year then we’ll do it with you‘.
“And this brings us to the good news. The HIX 2020 exhibitors have pledged their support for 2021 and with 15 months before the event, we have already allocated most of the stand spaces. So we now have the time and clarity to reflect, discuss, sketch and then create the hotel design experience that the community deserves.
“At this point in the announcement we’re supposed to provide a polished and sensible quote from us, ‘the organiser’. But we reckon that Anand from Hansgrohe summed it up pretty well on a zoom call this week:‘It’s sad not do it this year, but we’ll all build HIX 2021 to be something credible, meaningful and something for the future’. That’s exactly what we would have tried to say. Thank you Anand.”
HIX, which is fully supported by Hotel Designs, is now scheduled to take place at the same venue, sheltered inside London’s Business Design Centre, on November 18 – 19, 2021. Watch this space, we’re with HIX.
Main image credit: HIX
