Thanks to COVID-19, The Kamloops Chamber of Commerce will be recognizing our local businesses in a way we haven’t seen in the past.
The Chamber’s annual Business Excellence Awards are usually one big party but as Executive Director Acacia Pangilinan says because of the pandemic, the ceremony will be more like several small parties including online. “So, we’ll definitely have a digital component and so people will have the chance to watch along the evening of, but we’re also working right now with some of our restaurateurs in the community and hospitality partners about potentially having a multi location event.”
“Each of these awards will be at a different location so we can accommodate the physical distancing measures and the capacity requirements but still celebrate all together.”
She thinks a lot of people will take advantage of watching on the web. “Yes, there’s going to be a component that if people are wanting to watch it from their couches or their homes or their work places with their team, they’ll have the chance to do that too.”
The ceremony wasn’t the only thing that changed because of the pandemic, the nomination process was different. “We actually launched the awards on March 13th which was the day after Dr. Henry made the announcement that no more than 250 people could gather.”
She says the initial shut down gave businesses some extra time. “Because we had started right at the beginning of the pandemic, we weren’t really sure what the rest of the program was going to look like so we extended the nomination period for another two weeks just to let businesses have time to promote getting nominated or invite their clients to nominate them.”
Pangilinan added they also gave businesses extra time because of the reopening “We actually gave each nominee a little bit more time to get their submission packages in because that was right when the announcement was made to restart and so business were busy reopening so it was tough to have them fill out all the nomination forms but we got a great list of businesses how have moved on as finalists and so we’re excited to move forward with the process.”
The Chamber hasn’t ironed out where the different locations will be but the ceremony itself is scheduled for October 24.
To see a list of the nominees, they’re posted on the Kamloops Chamber of Commerce website.
