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A Message from FICP Leadership
Wednesday, March 18, 2020

Dear Friends,

The FICP Board of Directors and staff recognizes you are experiencing unprecedented times that are creating significant uncertainty and stress for your companies, teams and communities, in addition to personal hardships. Our thoughts are with each of you as we continue to experience disruptions to and loss of business as COVID-19 spreads across the globe.

We wanted to reassure you that your challenges are understood and appreciated. FICP will continue to support its members and hospitality partners across its virtual platforms 24/7 and advocate for our industry, both individually and in partnership with leading organizations that share this focus. We are continuing to monitor the situation closely in each location for FICP's upcoming in-person events, and proceeding as planned for now. We will communicate changes if needed as the events draw near.

To help inform and streamline your work, and provide you with opportunities to connect with and assist peers experiencing similar challenges, here are are a few resources and recommendations:

Stay informed and inform others

• Monitor guidance for event planners from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) when determining next steps for upcoming events.
• Use resources from the Meetings Mean Business Coalition with executives and colleagues to support fact-based decision making.

Support your peers and suppliers

• Use this U.S. Travel action alert to send a message directly to your senators and representatives with specific examples of how you, your colleagues or employees and your business are being affected. That alert reinforces efforts to support and protect the travel workforce.
• Share your questions, updates and successes on TheNetwork, and FICP's social media platforms: Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. 

Start planning for the recovery

• Our industry will recover from COVID-19, and there remains a quantifiable value and impact of in-person meetings. Keep your partners updated on the status of your events so they can help you plan accordingly. While always important, now more than ever, we need to stand together and support our members and hospitality partners who are struggling. Business will return and when it does, we encourage you to please support those who have so faithfully supported the association. We need to do what we can to lift each other back up. 
• If you have downtime in the coming weeks, broaden your skill set so you can approach your "new normal" as a more productive problem-solver. Visit FICP Anytime to view webinars, podcasts, research reports and other resources on demand.

If you have other ideas about how FICP can support you and our community during this time, please don't hesitate to reach out to FICP Headquarters with the suggestion. 

Be well!