Coronavirus is dividing the world into those who decry scaremongering about the epidemic’s impact and those who would rather be safe than sorry. Europe’s largest telecom conference — the Mobile World Congress scheduled to take place in Barcelona — has put itself firmly in the second group.
The decision to cancel the congress puts at risk an estimated €492m of revenue for the Catalan capital and 14,000 temporary jobs. It has pushed coronavirus to the top of the agenda of any trade body or corporate board that was planning to organise or send a delegation to an event virtually anywhere in the world.
While the fatality ratio of the virus is lower than Sars, which gave corporate networkers a jolt in 2002-03, scientists at Imperial College London estimate its impact “may be comparable to the major influenza pandemics” last century. It is only natural, then, for companies to question why they would send their sales team off to glad-hand contacts and potentially bring back more than the contract and logo-ed backpack full of business cards they bargained for.