Event Organizers Cancellation Guide
Canceling an event is something no one wants to do but sometimes you have to for your organization's best interest. Whether it be because of an internal or external cause, you need to handle it professionally and communicate with your audience and attendees to ensure you do not lose their support.
When determining whether to move your event forward or backward, it helps to understand the difference between an internal and external cause. Internal causes include budget cuts, employee layoffs, or leadership changes. External reasons include inclement weather events, natural disasters, or political unrest. Both are anything that would interfere with your scheduled event in a negative way.
For example:
If your organization's budget for Q1 has suddenly tightened, but there is still money left over in Q2, you can postpone your event to account for this financial change. This way, you don't lose out on potential revenue because of an unexpected budgetary cut. All there is to do is change the event day and ensure you do not just post online that the event is moved to a later date but contact your registered event attendees directly. Provide them with all the new information as well as a refund request form to fill out and submit in a certain amount of business days that you choose for them to get a refund for their ticket because there will be some participant withdrawals. Ensure that this matches the original refund policy displayed during event registration.
However, if you're planning an event that requires significant resources and funding, such as a conference or trade show, it could make more sense to cancel it rather than risk losing out on those funds.
External factors are harder to predict, so it's important to consider how they'll affect your event. For example, if a major hurricane hits your city, you won't be able to control what happens outside of your building. You'll need to decide whether to postpone or cancel your current event based on the external situation.
The most important thing to consider when evaluating whether or not to cancel or postpone an event is to determine the reasons behind your decision. You don’t want to make decisions based solely on emotion; instead, you want to base your decisions on facts.
There are many factors to consider when deciding whether or not to cancel an event. Some of those include:
• What is the impact of canceling on your reputation?
• How does canceling affect your brand image?
• Are there any financial implications associated with canceling?
• Will people still attend your event when or if it is rescheduled?
• Does your organization have enough resources to handle the additional workload of the canceling process and perhaps rescheduling?
If you do choose to proceed and cancel your event, these tips will help ensure you do it the smoothest way possible.
Communication-
The first thing to do is communicate with the attendees about canceling your upcoming event. This way, there won’t be any confusion. You might want to start by saying something like this: “We regret to inform you that we cannot hold our upcoming conference. We apologize for any inconvenience caused. Please accept our sincere apologies for the sudden change in plans.”
Make sure to state the reason why the event is being canceled. For example, “Due to the current political climate, it is no longer safe for us to host our annual conference.” If possible, try to give reasons behind the decision. You want your audience to understand why this had to happen and that it, in the end, is in everyone's best interest that the event is canceled.
You can also be vague with letting your audience know why you are canceling the event by tweaking that message, perhaps for legal reasons
and saying, “Unfortunately, we cannot continue holding the conference because of the current political situation. We hope to see everyone again soon.” This way, you can avoid offending anyone and still let people know what happened.
When formatting these announcements, ensure that you allow for comments, questions, or concerns. Do not just send out an announcement and not answer anyone's questions. Keep the conversation open, so your attendees genuinely know you care about them.
Refund everyone-
Issue refunds. If you're canceling your event, you'll likely need to give refunds to those who bought tickets. You can do automatic refunds through their purchasing method, a refund check, or email attendees asking for information so you can refund them. A full refund anytime an event is canceled is the best way to handle it. You planned something and sold tickets to be people, but now it is canceled, so they should be receiving their money back.
Partial refunds are frowned upon and typically do not go over well with guests. The only time some will find it acceptable is it, for instance, your event was to raise money for a good cause and not just a party. A great way to still raise money is offering a 50% refund and letting the attendees know the other half will be donating it to their cause of choice.
You might want to consider offering a discount code within your refund email to encourage people to come along to future events.
Cancel with the event suppliers-
The event organizers are responsible for informing all the suppliers and contractors about the cancellations. This includes everyone involved in the planning process. They include catering companies, venue managers, DJs, speakers, etc.
You can use the following template as a guide for sending out emails to the event planners:
FAQ Page-
The days leading up to an event are stressful enough without having to worry about answering questions from guests. But what happens when an event gets canceled or postponed? You might find yourself scrambling to answer questions from people who paid money to attend your event. If you don’t have an FAQ page, now is the perfect time to start one. Here are some things to keep in mind when creating your FAQ page:
1. Make sure the information is accurate.
2. Keep it short and sweet.
3. Include contact info.
4. Add a link to your social media accounts.
Stay in touch-
Try to stay in touch with your attendees to ensure you keep your relationship with them to secure their attendance at your next event.
Staying in touch can be anything from sending promotional emails to sending out surveys to get their feedback or opinion. Canceling an event people look forward to and have purchased tickets for can harm a relationship, so do everything you can to make sure they know you are sorry and still committed to making sure they have a good experience with your organization.
Overall-
We hope these steps help you smoothly cancel an event without causing a scene with everyone involved on that day. Many plan out-of-town visits for events and hotel bookings, so our advice is to take our communication tips and present them to your guests in the quickest way possible.Business Events
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