Message from the organisers to the exhibitors:
It is with a great deal of regret that we are announcing the cancellation of Posidonia 2020, originally planned for June 2020 and subsequently postponed to October 2020.
We have reached this difficult decision following close consultation with many exhibitors and with our shipping community stakeholders, after assessing the current state of Covid-19 in countries around the world.
The worrying increase of cases in certain jurisdictions and the inability to predict reliably where the Pandemic will take us in the months ahead, compounds the uncertainty that now prevails, imposing upon us circumstances that are beyond our control.
As our exhibitors are now at the point of incurring substantial costs in the preparation of their stands and overall participation at Posidonia, including travel commitments, adopting a ‘wait and see’ policy and then being forced to cancel Posidonia much closer to October is a risk we are not willing to take.
We feel that our longstanding and close relationship with our exhibitors, going back many years, leaves us no option but to take action now to ensure that you are not adversely affected.
Furthermore the complexities of international travel which are constantly being re-evaluated as events develop, pose major challenges and practical restrictions to our international exhibitors and visitors, with the distinct possibility that many will not be able to visit Greece. Without them Posidonia would not be the same.
One of the unique characteristics of Posidonia is the opportunities it provides to meet, interact and socialise in and around the exhibition and enjoy the hospitality, energy and fun that surround our event. We are concerned that this special environment that brings together the Greek and international shipping communities is in danger of being undermined due to Covid-19, thus not delivering the results that everyone expects and is looking forward to at Posidonia.
We considered postponing the event to March or April 2021, as some of you have suggested, but decided against it. We feel that putting our exhibitors ‘on hold’ once again would not be viable or fair, given that there is no certainty on where we would be around next December or January when decisions for a spring 2021 event would again have to be taken.
Instead, we are embarking on our preparations for the next Posidonia in June 2022 with optimism and the confidence that well before then we will have entered a world with Covid-19 under control.
Yours sincerely,
Theodore Vokos
Managing Director
Posidonia Exhibitions S.A.
