In an interview with The Portugal News, CEO of afpop, Michael Reeve said that when lockdown started and the arena in Portimão, which was the venue for BLiP, was converted into an emerg-ency hospital, he was worried there would not be a BLiP at all this year.

But interest among exhibitors and visitors remained high and so afpop decided it would be best for the 20th anniversary of the event to be the first ever BLiP Online instead.

The idea was to create a virtual stand for each exhibitor, 50 of these stands have already been designed and many more businesses are interested in taking part online. While the stand is created by afpop, the content can be changed at any time by the business itself. They can add in photos, videos, texts, a link to their online shop or website and they even have an option to add in Skype, so that they can communicate with potential clients and customers in real time.

“The beautiful thing with doing it online is that anybody can visit it, from anywhere” said Michael Reeve, adding that his hopes for 2021 are that “if this year is successful, we will create a joint event with the physical event over the weekend and then carry this on with the BLiP website for the remainder of that following week”.

The BLiP Online launch is scheduled for 24 October 2020 and will last for 9 days, until 1 November. From then on, visitors can see the stands and explore options on how to better live in Portugal.

The online exhibition will be completely free of charge for both visitors and exhibitors. “The whole point of this is that it’s free. We don’t want anybody paying for anything. That is not what it’s about. It’s about us trying to do something to support the people who have supported BLiP” concluded Michael Reeve.

More news about the online edition of BLiP will be shared in the near future. For further information, please visit: www.betterlivinginportugal.com