The number of firms planning parties may have dropped even further as the holidays approached. “Most of our corporate clients reached out to us about a virtual holiday party,” says Kawania Wooten of Howerton + Wooten Events. “Then, they all nixed the idea for various reasons. I think that some of them probably gave up because of finances and some gave up because of pandemic fatigue.”
A HuffPost/YouGov survey didn’t find much interest in virtual holiday fetes, with just 7 percent of respondents saying they’d be “very enthusiastic” about one—perhaps no surprise after nine months of staring at screens for virtually everything.