Bill Geist's Zeitgeist

Closer to Home

With absolutely no disrespect to those that have lost their lives to COVID-19 in Washington, most were connected to an elder facility in Kirkland. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time in an environment that allowed the spread of the virus among a population most susceptible. We mourn their passing.

But, shit got real in the travel space when the Berlin Travel Festival was postponed yesterday when Festival staff was notified that they had been in close contact with someone infected with COVID-19:

As you may have already learned from the media, there is a confirmed case of COVID-19 infection in Berlin as of yesterday evening. Members of our team have been in contact with the infected. As a protective measure, the team was requested to go home immediately by the public health department. We had to stop our work effective immediately. Therefore it is impossible for us to hold the Berlin Travel Festival next weekend.

We can all only imagine what our industry partners are going through as they self-confine. And, our thoughts are with them that the contagion wasn't passed on. 

Stay Strong.

Corona Prep

Up until this year, preparing for Corona meant stocking up on limes. Today, it means something very different.

We were hanging with a DMO recently that has a staff member on assignment in Italy, which has seen a fairly significant outbreak of COVID-19. How to bring this person home and back to work...and yet avoid the rest of the staff keeping their distance or refusing to come to work?

The discussion evolved to developing a potential policy that we all should consider...staff returning from locales where a viral episode has taken up residence should self-quarantine for 14 days and work from home. It's not like most of us can't, given our increasingly connected world. And, as one manager suggested, staying home anytime a staffer is sick should be encouraged to protect the rest of the staff from any pathogen.

This brief from our friends at the law firm Foley & Lardner should be required reading.

As are limes.