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The erection of temporary marketplaces can be a wasteful business, and exhibitions require a lot of materials that are often difficult to reuse or are outdated by the next edition of the event. So even before we look at the hefty carbon footprint that accompanies thousands of international visitors transporting themselves to an event, organisers, venues and exhibitors need to operate according to a more sustainable agenda.

Clearly, being sustainable means much more than separating plastics from your cardboard when you’re taking the bins out. It means changing management systems, operating within a new framework that will probably mean revisiting your current procedures and, ideally, obtaining independent accreditation attesting to your company’s sound green credentials. It sounds like hard work, but let’s not forget, the result can be positive PR, new business and a higher profile.

Ever alive to public perceptions, the industry has been keen to be seen as green.

Indeed, the industry has embraced green principles (which involve a great deal more than lessening the environmental impact of events) in a variety of new and innovative ways.

In one example of a modern venue’s commitment to sustainability, Amsterdam RAI received goods by boat for the first time in 2011. The electric-powered vessel Mokum Mariteam arrived at the exhibition venue fully laden, and left it with an equally full cargo of waste materials. The idea came about thanks to fruitful cooperation with waste disposal company Icova, one of the founders of Mokum Mariteam, and it soon became clear that this type of clean and quiet freight transport method was ideal for supplying materials-heavy events such as exhibitions.

The venue divided its sustainability goals into seven themes: energy and climate; mobility; water; waste; employees; procurement; and social engagement. Key initiatives so far include using carpet waste as a combustion product in the cement industry, and a novel waste separation process.
 
“Our aim is to be a successful business that contributes to a sustainable society and ensures a good balance in all the choices we make,” general manager Hans Bakker claimed. “We believe that sustainability adds value to an organisation, and including it in the company policy will generate more clients and greater engagement among employees.”

Amsterdam RAI has also installed 1,632 solar panels on the roof of one of its halls, providing 360,000 kilowatt-hours, equivalent to the annual electricity consumption of around 140 households. Over 60 per cent of the 12,000sqm roof surface is now covered in panels, the maximum load possible weight-wise considering the roof construction and the use of rigging during events. These solar panels also translate into a CO² reduction of around 150 tonnes a year.
 
Large and active centres such as RAI’s hall are central to Amsterdam’s economy and are popular sites for municipal sustainability programmes, but investment in solar technology like this does not come cheap. More precisely, it costs the not inconsiderable sum of €500,000 (US$675,000); RAI raised the money courtesy of Triodos Bank, its house banks Deutsche Bank and Rabobank Amsterdam, and a loan from the Amsterdam Investment Fund, a city council initiative that supports investments in sustainable energy projects. 

With this installation, Amsterdam RAI took a step towards its goal of being a clear front-runner in the conference and event industry in Europe with regards to sustainability. All future developments, such as the RAI Amtrium conference facility, were also to be equipped with solar panels.

The venue has continued its drive to become part of an elite group of sustainable global convention centres and tourism operators with the achievement of the EarthCheck Gold certification, a sustainability benchmark in the business tourism sector. It became the first exhibition and congress centre in Europe to achieve this status, and in doing so threw down the gauntlet to other European venues. The Gold Coast Convention Centre in Queensland, Australia, had been the first centre to achieve Gold status earlier in 2013, but as RAI showed Europe was not to be left behind. Of particular note was the advance of both businesses in improving waste separation and recycling.

“Attaining EarthCheck Gold certification is not an easy task,” said CEO of EC3 Global and EarthCheck Stewart Moore. “It requires commitment from the entire personnel to achieve better results in terms of sustainability each year. The challenge is to continually prove the integrity of an organisation’s operational practices and then be willing to have everything checked and measured by an independent third party.”

Developing such a culture, and maintaining it, continues to be an elusive target for the industry, despite being so keen to present itself as resourceful in tackling matters of waste.

In time, Amsterdam RAI won the first ever sustainability award granted by global exhibition association UFI. It wasn’t the only company vying for the title, as it was selected from six shortlisted finalists, including South Africa’s Cape Town International Convention Centre, Germany’s Messe Frankfurt and Switzerland’s Palexpo, home to the Geneva Motor Show.

Commenting at the time, UFI MD Paul Woodward explained that being truly sustainable is rooted in reality, working with proven results rather than simple adherence to green practice and ideals:

“In order to promote the full scope of sustainability within the exhibition sector, this first Sustainable Development Award competition aims to reward a broad, realistic approach to the topic,” he said. “This theme was especially challenging as only those companies with a significant history and proven results in this domain could qualify for entry.”

[X-HEAD] Declaration of independence

The industry was in need of standardised accreditation in the effort to prove its sustainability to the marketplace. Exhibition organiser UBM Live Amsterdam committed to applying the UK-derived BS8901 standard early on. Its use of the standard, which subsequently evolved into the international standard ISO20121, ensures a comprehensive approach to sustainability applications that UFI claims will “significantly influence the scope of a company’s operations in the future.”

International ISO20121 standard is first and foremost a management system. It is essentially a way of working that helps a company consider how – at every decision point – to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. The decision by UBM Live Amsterdam to apply this particular standard to its operations is linked to the fact that it is well recognised in Europe.

Meanwhile, across the pond in America, the APEX/ASTM Environmentally Sustainable Meeting Standards accreditation was achieving greater prominence. This standard comprised nine individual standards, or sectors, and addressed the scope of the event planning process; less a management system than a framework to operate within. Another standard, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), was seen predominantly as a checklist to aid disclosure – a tool to help companies feed back on their levels of sustainability.

The key obstacle to organisers and venues was in the requirement of a third party to provide this accreditation. While self-auditing and formal disclosure has its merits – after all, most international events take place under the watchful eyes of thousands of visitors and exhibitors – without an independent body confirming that our events are becoming more green, why should we be believed? Parallels will be drawn with self-auditing show attendance – namely that unverified figures aren’t worth the paper they’re written on – which at best demonstrates a desire to be seen as progressive. But third-party accreditation immediately introduces a problem that is complicated to resolve. The first venue or company that wants to be accredited typically gets accreditation at a price that makes it an affordable prospect for others in the industry. Often referred to as penetration pricing, the industry could then be tempted to start paying for this new service if the costs are not prohibitive. For a small outlay, a company could hoist aloft its green credentials for all to see. 

As such standardisation becomes commonplace, the pattern of demand changes. Accreditation becomes necessary to compete on even terms, and, for anyone unfamiliar with basic economics, this increased need leads to an increased price. And in order to cover the price, the cost will ultimately be transferred to the clients using the venue or company. Costs need to be recouped somewhere. Suddenly, there is a question of whether being seen as green or more affordable is preferable. The need to overcome this deterrent inherent in introducing and maintaining this accreditation poses a very real problem for an industry that comes under heavy criticism for its perceived profligate use of materials and energy. Short of controlled pricing and oversight of the assessments and the assessors – in much the same way as schools are inspected – the benefits risk being outweighed by the costs. 

Ultimately, independent verification seems to be the only way to truly certify a venue or organiser’s green achievements. If your company goes to all the effort of conforming to sustainability standards, then why leave your credentials open to debate?

As the exhibition industry has pressed on with improving its sustainability, companies looking to display their green sheen have needed to demonstrate both innovation and accountability. Given the cost both in terms of finance and manpower, it was important to know what was wanted from accreditation before setting off on a sustainability drive.

In the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, a frequent and rarely justified criticism of international exhibitions and business events was that they leave a heavy carbon footprint when the doors close and the attendees, exhibitors and service providers head home. Viewed in isolation, an event does consume a great deal of natural resource; the disposable materials used in stand design, the promotional material, and of course the fuel for flights and other transportation all mount up. 

But these accusations are easily countered. What would the alternatives cost? How many individual flights would be required to replicate the meetings and opportunities we create at an exhibition? And at what cost to our working and personal lives? Sustainability is about much more than clever waste disposal. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) needs are part and parcel of what we understand sustainability to mean today, but a truly sustainable culture provides much more.

Far more complicated is the counter-argument to claims that the exhibition and meetings industry is full of unnecessary expense, that the experiential elements that define our exhibitions and events are all too often surplus to requirements.

When the recession hit in 2009, the global meetings and events industry came under just this kind of misplaced and misguided scrutiny. Face-to-face meetings were seen as expenses that could be eliminated, and the rhetoric within the media was driven largely by infamous but isolated incidents of abuse.

In the United States it soon became clear that the industry lacked the type of advocacy necessary to communicate the positive impact of face-to-face interaction to the people instituting measures aimed at reducing what was perceived as ‘unnecessary’ expenditure.

As Nan Marchand Beauvois, vice-president of National Councils and general manager of the US Travel Association, points out, those same financial companies that fomented the global financial crisis were now criticising the meetings industry for holding meetings in Las Vegas – meetings they claimed were unnecessary and frivolous.

“It was kind of the perfect storm, and our industry in the United States was caught in the middle of it,” she says. “What resulted from this is that a week after our elected officials were saying ‘don’t have meetings in Vegas because it was frivolous,’ these companies are bankrupt and they’re spending hundreds and thousands of dollars on entertaining in Las Vegas.”

The impact was significant. The meetings industry in Las Vegas “pretty much shut down. Many business events were cancelled, hotels went from 90 per cent occupancy to 50 per cent. The exhibition industry did not escape either. Companies, both selling or buying, reduced the manner and frequency of their attendance.

At that time the US Travel Association got together with all the other associations in the meetings industry; all were agreed that something had to be done. It was the first time that the CEOs of SITE, MPI, CIC, IAEE and others 

said, collectively, that the decline had to be arrested. It could not go on: more than US$100m of cancellations had taken place within six weeks of negative comments by President Obama.

President of Maritz Travel, David Peckinpaugh, underlines the real-world consequences of this sort of political posturing: “Our company was managing a meeting for [insurance giant] AIG at the luxury Montage Hotel in California, which had just accepted TARP [Troubled Asset Relief Programme] money; government money. What hit the news, before the Vegas uproar, was the fact Tiffany boxes were left in rooms, but TARP money was not used for those.

“However, as you know, when something gets in the press it can be quickly spun into a very negative light,” says Peckinpaugh. “In this case incorrectly stating that public money was being inappropriately used for AIG to wine and dine a ‘boondoggle’ for its employees.

“Our company lost $140m in terms of business in the next 60 days,” he says, adding that nearly 500 people were laid off.

So in 2009, the Meetings Mean Business campaign was formed with the goal of protecting and defending the industry from attack. At the time simply called ‘Council’, it had a PR campaign targeted at elected officials in Washington, and took full page adverts in the Wall Street Journal and in USA Today. The industry was, literally, as Marchand Beauvois says, “putting its money where its mouth is.”

Fast-forward to 2014 and the industry leaders had redoubled their efforts and relaunched the campaign with a focus on creating one voice to extol the undeniable value that meetings, events, trade shows, incentive travel, conferences and conventions bring to all sectors of business, government agencies and the economy.

“Today it achieves its goals actively engaging with stakeholders, the media and – crucially – key policymakers, a proactive campaign was built around three pillars: creating personal connections, driving positive business outcomes and building strong communities,” says Marchand Beauvois, adding that in the US, elected officials might not necessarily understand the industry’s positive impact. “We had to educate our lawmakers so they understood the value of our businesses, and also that any of the laws that they were able to put in action are good for our industry. That was important for us.”

It’s a matter that should, after all, resonate with a community that has itself come under intense scrutiny for its own ‘frivolous’ meetings. “Government meetings in the United States have been under attack for three years,” Marchand Beauvois points out. “The budgets for federal agencies travelling to meetings has been cut 30 per cent and the trend is that it will stay that way and not increase.

“Some of our biggest supporters are from states that benefit primarily from the industry,” Marchand Beauvois explains. “Senators and congressmen from [Las Vegas home state] Nevada, for example. We probably have 22 very strong supporters, but we have a lot of work to do because every time there is an election we may lose an elected official so it’s an ongoing process to make sure we educate our elected officials.”

As mentioned previously, sustainability is not just about the broader issues of being green, watching your carbon offset and recycling. It’s not even about being socially sensitive. It’s about changing the way companies appeal to their clients and those whose lives they affect with innovative initiatives, engaging and bringing benefit to their surrounding communities, and creating a greener and more environmentally friendly approach to business.

Despite the prosaic but necessary adherence to paper standards, optimisation of procedure and certification, sustainability is ultimately about using our imagination. True social responsibility and sustainable development starts with a vision and a passion for making the world a better place in which to do business.

“We need to be socially responsible,” says Amsterdam RAI’s Ids Boersma. “From the venue operating angle, especially on the conference side, we have already seen the organiser asking us for our social responsibility programme, or asking how sustainable we were. We started working towards it in 2008, setting clear goals, targets in various fields, whether it is energy, waste reduction, water usage, or charity and diversity.

“For a venue it seems slightly easier – there are a lot of invisible things that people don’t see but that we still do. We generate power and use the heat that comes out of it,” he says. “We changed all our light bulbs, replacing more than 10,000 [strip lights] because that saves energy. We serve healthy food. All our coffee is organic. There is a long list of things you can do as a venue operator.”

According to Boersma, this public transport initiative exemplifies the business benefit that being sustainable can bring. RAI’s initiative meant that for €7.50 (US$8.68), visitors could travel to Amsterdam and back. “In Holland that is quite a good deal, I can tell you,” said Boersma.

“We invested in having people come to the shows by public transport. Then we researched that and saw that we brought more people to the show because of that alliance we had with public transportation providers. That was a cost, but it paid back.”

UBM Asia’s executive vice-president Michael Duck claims that corporate culture must be changed from the top down, if the industry’s sustainability drive is to succeed. UBM’s ‘NGO’ event series, which began life in Brazil, engages communities over issues such as venues, freight forwarders and stand contractors, and seeks to get people in the corporate social responsibility arena to meet with Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs).

“The idea and the plan is to work with these communities in terms of giving something back,” says Duck. “The venue gives itself for free. The stand contractors give the stand for free, in terms of building them. The marketing, and the floorplans and also the promotional elements are given by our company and we bring these communities together. We harness these commercial resources.”

UBM duly progressed to hosting more NGO events, initially in Brazil and London (where it was called Responsible Business), later in India and in the US; the latter event held in San Francisco was called Business For Better.

“It’s a real journey to become more sustainable. It starts with a vision and a passion,” says Ids Boersma. “You have to involve your people. You have to know that what you have done so far was just a small step, there’s still a giant leap to be made.”

For an industry that gathers together so many, and uses so much non-reusable material so many times a year, the effort must be made. While all of the impacts of an exhibition are generally measured in the hope of seeing an increase or enhancement (be it in economic, social, cultural or political terms), one area that all stakeholders must focus on in order to drive a decrease in impact is in the negative environmental effects of exhibitions. 

“Measuring the positive impacts from the perspective of stakeholders is important to long-term sustainability,” comments Vivid Interface’s Geoff Dixon. “The industry must increase collaboration in order to reach a clear understanding of the direct and residual effects from these events.”

Through collaboration and the use of modern technology, systems that assist in creating efficiency in evaluation will continue to be developed by the industry, and for the industry.

The impact of the online world required the exhibition industry to look beyond the ordinary exhibition model, to re-evaluate what it is that exhibitions provide the markets they serve. Rather than be transposed into a new, confusing medium, our view of exhibitions had to be rewritten entirely.

Embracing the online world enabled exhibition organisers to add new value to their events, events that could now live longer in the public’s consciousness; we could accommodate vast communities that were inconceivable with a three-day physical show; the rich experience, dialogue and dissemination of content that we could offer had moved leaps and bounds beyond where it once was.

For an industry built on data – a defining element of a leading exhibition – the reach of online giants such as Google, Facebook and Amazon was enough to make even the most hardened international organisers salivate. Theirs was now a world waiting to be profiled, separated and categorised for their marketing pleasure.

Companies in this market were succeeding and succeeding big. The American online bargain company Groupon became very successful on the back of a simple model offering coupons to subscribers, giving them discounts on promotional third-party company offers. These companies use Groupon to offer their services at discounted rates proportional to the number of people who take advantage of the promotion.

For example, a company may provide a flight in a helicopter over London for US$400, but if enough people sign up for the flights through a Groupon promotion, the price drops significantly.  

Sounds simple? Well evidently simple ideas are the most effective. In January 2011 the company issued around 30 million shares of stock to a group of third-party investors in exchange for US$946m in cash. The IPO price of $20 per share valued the firm at US$12.7bn, making it the second-biggest Internet company listing behind Google, valued at US$23.1bn in 2004.

However, at the time of writing Groupon shares trade below $7, valuing the company at a third of its initial public value, something in the region of US$4.5bn. This is the problem with overnight Internet sensations, or untested trading models: they are awfully prone to overnight devaluation.

Look closely and you’ll notice that what companies are buying into isn’t another online name-check: it’s actually Groupon’s huge database of clients. These firms take an initial hit in profits in exchange for access to millions of potential buyers. The company launched in Chicago in 2008, and by the end of 2014 92 million people around the world had downloaded its app. Yet this still comes nowhere near the might of Facebook with 1.44 billion active users. The fact that online companies have access to a potential and profiled database of so many is enough to make marketing directors’ heads spin. 

A question soon emerged: was the future of event creation going to come from the search engines or the exhibition companies? And this is where organisers needed to exercise caution. There was a very real possibility that search engine firms would enter the space typically dominated by exhibition organisers with carefully focused databases and direct access to their audiences and reach.

“In the expo industry we work with a list of maybe 10,000 clients,” says ITE founder and industry veteran Roger Shashoua. “Facebook has a list of one billion names it can market events to directly. Someone working on a site such as Facebook would be able to target two million visitors rather than the 10,000 we can.”

This is the crucial point. While virtual events were never going to replace physical shows, their reach was already far greater than that of the organisers with their physical events. Whoever finds the holy grail of how to cater for and monetise these huge online communities stands to make a fortune.

None the less, organisers are a necessary element in that equation. “The search engines may have the potential client lists but they don’t have the knowledge needed to run a physical event,” Shashoua points out. “You can never rule out someone from the other side telling you they need you.”  

Clearly, the sheer number of people declaring a shared interest or profession online, making associations via LinkedIn and so on, makes the act of searching for a like-minded person in a hall of 2,000 people redundant. If you want to single someone out, you find them online first. To paraphrase Reed Exhibitions’ chairman Mike Rusbridge, the days of chance encounters are now behind us. 

The ideal exhibition model for many began to take the form of a modest capacity venue where buyers meet and hopefully shake hands with business partners they’ve already met online. In many cases signing the paperwork happens on the show floor.

Shashoua calls online the ‘final frontier’ for exhibition organisers. The advent of the online age presented the industry with new, digital, territory to colonise. There was little in the real world that had yet to be tackled. “Everything has been done: Russia, China, Brazil, India and Asia – nobody was there and almost everyone is there today,” he says. “The days of creating a group from scratch and building 100 per cent organically to rival the great companies are over.

“The only market left was the Internet. No one had yet found the way to fully exploit the potential of the Internet in regards to the exhibitions field.”

As evidenced by the stratospheric growth of Groupon and its Noughties dot.com contemporaries, the Internet was seen as the ideal breeding ground for entrepreneurs in the exhibition industry: “a level playing field for everyone”, says Shashoua.

“Entrepreneurs are driven by huge rewards and recognition in the industry. For an entrepreneur to succeed, a complicated market has to exist,” he said. “The market has to have a high barrier of entry with enormous risk, but the rewards have to be huge. An entrepreneur needs a situation where he or she can operate quickly and adapt to new situations when corporations cannot.”

Entering a market in which the exhibition industry has not yet fully emerged is a risky activity, but if time has shown exhibition organisers only one thing, it is that there is no such thing as an entirely straightforward market in which to organise an event. Be it political, economic, social or technological, environmental or legal, there are any number of complications that can be an exhibition’s undoing.

Political instability is among the most terrifying of them. It cannot be ruled out, and can take place at any time in any part of the world. While unrest may be commonplace in certain parts of the Middle East or Africa, anybody who witnessed London in flames during the 2011 riots knows that social or political flashpoints can erupt in countries that we would ordinarily deem particularly stable. 

National or localised crises occurring just before or during their exhibitions are understandably every organiser’s worst nightmare. When an organiser gathers a large group of people, it takes on a huge amount of responsibility. To put this in context, the exhibition industry’s two largest organisers, Reed Exhibitions and UBM, currently run 900 shows around the world between them. There is rarely a time when these companies are not exposed to instability in one or more of their theatres of operation. 

The Arab Spring of 2010 was one such regional crisis, or more accurately a series of regional crises, that escalated very quickly. To the chairman of the Egypt Expo and Convention Authority, Sherif Salem, the surprise was very real. In Egypt, he claims, nobody expected the situation to explode. “The protests took everybody both in Egypt and abroad by great surprise, and nobody knew what would happen,” he says. The escalation, in Salem’s words, “brought society to a standstill.” Banks and shops closed and traffic was restricted; Salem had to put everything on hold and wait helplessly for the outcome.

In 2008 the international director of UBM’s Built Environment, Eliane van Doorn, 

was directing the company’s pharmaceutical and food ingredients portfolio when her job took her to Mumbai, India. As van Doorn sat in a taxi reflecting on her press conference at a local hotel where she had just addressed the impending launch of UBM Live pharmaceutical shows CPHI and P-MEC, she was given news of a devastating terrorist attack: the Oberoi and Trident hotel complex at Nariman Point, where her press conference had just concluded, had been stormed by terrorists in an act that led to the deaths of 32 staff and guests. “There were two hours between the Trident hotel press conference and when the shooting started so we had a little angel above our heads,” she says. Immediately, she entered crisis mode. 

“We spent the whole night trying to reach our participants, telling them to stay put. We didn’t know what was going on,” she says. “We were in direct contact with the police and military. We decided in the middle of the night to postpone the event for one day, which meant having to reach out to 30,000 people in one night, but luckily all the telephones worked.” Van Doorn and UBM decided it was too dangerous to open the shows, so the events were postponed until a year later and refunds provided for everyone involved. “It was a hectic time between dealing with exhibitors and contacting [then UBM chief exec] David Levin who had to make a big decision, as this would be a great loss.”

Having a local office meant the organiser was able to make concerted decisions quickly, and ensure the involvement of all the right groups. “If needed, we could talk to the police and get extra security,” she comments. “If you are a foreign company going into a country cold, you will never have these connections.”

By virtue of their unpredictable profession, event organisers have an inbuilt coping mechanism for sudden situations and possess the right mental tools to deal with the unexpected. In van Doorn’s words, and at the risk of stating the obvious, they are used to organising things: “In situations like that it really helps to have that quality to put everything in place, sort priorities and see what you can do,” she says. “Some people were in a complete panic and screaming and crying, while others were calm and did what they had to do. But the ones screaming and crying are part of your team so you have to deal with that too.

“It’s our job to be alert in what we are doing. We had to postpone because of SARS and Katrina. We had to deal with the bombings in London and Madrid. Things can happen and you have to be alert and keep your head clear.”

Two years later in Bangkok, director of the Exhibition Department at the Thailand Convention and Exhibition Bureau (TCEB), Supawan Teerarat, was tackling problems arising from the 2010 ‘Red Shirt’ protests, which saw hundreds take to the streets in anger at the Government. More than 80 civilians and at least six soldiers were killed in the ensuing military crackdown, and while the trouble was for the most part confined to a few specific areas of Bangkok, the international press coverage discouraged organisers from bringing business there. 

Teerarat set up a ‘war room’ involving all of the stakeholders in the exhibition industry: the Thailand Hotel Association, the Police Authority, Tourism Authority, Airport Authority, customs department, venues and the Thai Exhibition Association (the private counterpart to the public TCEB). “We teamed up and discussed short-term and long-term problems. The short-term problems came from the communications in the world news, so we talked closely with the organisers and gave a statement from TCEB with an update every day. We wanted to provide as much information as possible,” she explains.

Global coverage of a dramatic situation such as this is hardly good for business, and for associations such as TCEB much of the crisis management is concentrated on broadcasting reassurance for foreign organisers that the problems are isolated and will not encroach on the day-to-day running of an event.  In this instance, TCEB needed to communicate the fact that the protests were local and would not affect the internal workings of the country. “We had contact with the Thailand Hotel Association, members of which were accommodating the exhibitors and visitors, so we set up a TCEB assistance desk at hotels and airports to give information and help with the transfers,” Teerarat adds.

Both organisers and associations must make up-to-the-minute information available. “You must give information updates to your exhibitors, because the big concern will be that they don’t know what is happening,” says Teerarat. “Tell them how to get to the airport and what is happening at all times and they feel more secure. Will it be possible for you to relocate a large group of people if necessary or get them home if they want? Organisers should have that plan, especially if they have a local partner. Nowadays there are many bodies like TCEB and these bodies should be a focus point.” As with van Doorn, Teerarat emphasises the importance of local connections, strongly recommending the approach of making local partnerships.

The 2010 uprising in Kyrgyzstan began one week before the eighth edition of ITE’s Bishkek Build, the only show that the organiser stages in the country. The uprising claimed the lives of 88 people, and Yuri Borodikhin, group director of ITE Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, recalls postponing the show at the eleventh hour, with the equipment of some exhibitors already onsite.

“It was a much worse situation than [the] Tulip Revolution of 2005,” he says. “There was a lot of looting and people were setting buildings on fire such as the police stations and banks. Criminals were released on the streets and the police had all but disappeared because protesters were attacking and beating them.

“We were worried because March and April were such difficult times in Kyrgyzstan,” says Borodikhin, referencing the fact that demonstrations had become commonplace since the 2005 revolution. “People were really disappointed with the new regime and thought it was worse than before. During the day it was just demonstrations and so on. But that night there were beatings and it was obvious it wouldn’t settle down in time for the exhibition. We decided to push back a month this time, refunding those who decided to cancel.”

Again, communication with the exhibitors, especially those from overseas, was at the crux of the crisis management. “We were in constant contact with our clients,” says Borodikhin. “We wanted to avoid risking anyone’s life. Of course we hired extra security to make sure that if anything happened we could protect our clients and exhibitors from harm.”

In all instances, the arrival of a new government should catalyse organisers into arranging support and permission before anything changes. “You have to react very quickly and apply for a letter of support from the new minister. You have to have some Government support and someone to come and open the show. In Kyrgyzstan by law you have to have Government support from the appropriate ministry,” says Borodikhin. In every crisis, there is opportunity. 

[X-HEAD] Airborne industry paralysis

When it comes to generating a crisis, there is nothing that scares an industry dependent on air travel quite as much as the outbreak of a killer disease. In its first decade the 21st century was afflicted by a trio of highly publicised outbreaks of potential pandemics in the form of bird flu (H5N1), swine flu (H1N1) and SARS. However, not one of these had the Hollywood cachet that accompanied Ebola’s fearful presence on the front pages. More than 11,000 deaths were attributed to the disease by the Centre for Disease Control by the time this book had gone to press in 2015. The whole thing was a gift for over-excitable newspapers looking to sell copies.

Ironically, given that bird flu and Ebola are both associated with and carried by winged animals (chickens and birds, and fruit bats, respectively), one of the greatest impacts created by the global media’s inflated and scaremongering coverage was felt by the flight industry. Airlines are particularly susceptible to international scare stories. Terrorism, volcanic activity and any number of events over which we have little to no control are all too often ladled over the front pages with hyperbole. The impact that widespread coverage of the Ebola crisis had on the exhibition industry, for which air travel is a necessity, was very real, even if the actual threat to air travellers was minimal.

“The risk of Ebola transmission on airplanes is so low, WHO does not consider air transport hubs at high risk for further spread of Ebola,” said Dr Isabelle Nuttall, director of the World Health Organisation (WHO) Global Capacity Alert and Response. “Unlike infections such as influenza or tuberculosis, Ebola is not airborne. It can only be transmitted by direct contact with the body fluids of a person who is sick with the disease.”

This statement, released in August 2014 by the WHO, confirmed its view that the risk of transmission of the Ebola virus during air travel remained low, and underscored the official advice against travel bans to and from affected countries.

It was a sentiment reiterated by the United Nations, which cautioned against flight restrictions into and out of Ebola-affected countries in West Africa on the grounds that such limitations in fact prevented critically needed aid workers and supplies from reaching the affected areas, as well as exacerbating the economic and diplomatic isolation of the region. “The current limitations on flights into and out of these countries, and the restrictions placed on aircraft originating from these countries transiting through airports in neighbouring countries, though understandable, are not warranted,” commented chief UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric. “It is not an optimal measure for controlling the import of Ebola virus disease. The measure does not reflect what is known about the way in which the virus passes between people.”

But the media did not respond in kind, and nor did some air travel authorities. In late August people travelling from or through Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, were banned by Kenya from entering the country, while Cameroon suspended all flights from Ebola-affected countries.

While the airlines and media responded to the outbreak with measures that potentially exacerbated the situation, the business events and exhibition industries opted to provide insight, rather than dynamite.

“Inevitably, and as with earlier H1N1 outbreaks and other health scares, the media coverage can be highly sensationalist and disproportionate to the actual risks involved,” says the CEO of ICCA (an association for the global conference industry), Martin Sirk. “Irrational knee-jerk reactions are likely to be more damaging for our industry than the outbreak itself, so we should all encourage organisers and delegates to access factual information from WHO and other reputable bodies, rather than relying on the media.”

Threats like this must be put into perspective; thankfully, it is becoming increasingly easy to gain access to travel or crisis information that makes it simpler to understand the scope of such issues, allowing exhibitors and visitors to make up their own minds as to whether or not to attend an event. While caution is always the best advice, history has shown that today’s extensive media coverage can make an issue like this appear much more widespread than it really is. 

The real victims of these grave and tragic issues are poorly served by journalistic hysteria; and although there is no real comparison it is still worth pointing out that the impact on the meetings industry of ill-conceived inflammatory coverage can also cause considerable damage. Understanding and diligence by organisers are key to limiting the damage caused by such outbreaks of irrationality.

In the history of the modern exhibition, there is no guaranteed way of dealing with force majeure, and when a bad hand is dealt to the team behind an event, what is crucial is that the correct numbers are in their phone directory.

The dawn of the 21st century saw a lot of organisers moving into nascent exhibition regions in the Middle East, Russia and South East Asia, for very different reasons. Although not as large a proving ground for shows as China, Latin America or India, the stock of these three regions has been steadily rising on the international stage.

Stability in a region where neighbours are making headlines with tales of civil unrest pays dividends, but this stability is not confined to politics. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is very much an economic stronghold, sitting beneath only Saudi Arabia and Iran in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region in terms of productivity. It is one of the world’s wealthiest countries, with a GDP for 2014 of around US$401.65bn and GDP per capita of US$25,772.

While other markets around the world look less certain, the UAE’s combination of abundant natural resources, a stable political climate and strategic investments delivering diversified revenue streams has for some time been attracting foreign direct investment.

It’s easier to arrange exhibitions in the UAE than in neighbouring countries for many reasons besides its strong economy. It is widely regarded as a more cosmopolitan, modern and open market, with 200 different nationalities living in a place smaller than a single state in the US. One spokesman for an organiser active in the UAE pointed out to me that far from being bound by “restrictive, insular tradition” in a way that damages the reputation of some other places in the Middle East, it has more diverse nationalities and cultures than the whole of the US. Other concerns over the import of business to the region are addressed by free trade zones, wherein Emiratis are not required to have 51 per cent business ownership, aimed at attracting general business.

One thing the UAE has in common with a lot of the exhibition markets growing in popularity is the ease with which it can be reached by source markets in an age when air travel is increasingly affordable and convenient. The UAE is situated eight hours from two-thirds of the world’s population, and as a busy travel hub it is ideally placed for international exhibitions. It may not have a large domestic market, and consumer events are tough to get off the ground, but its function as a portal into the Middle East is a clear selling point.

Industrially, the UAE is a big player in construction, IT, energy, healthcare, finance and education, and the success of trade exhibitions in these sectors reflects this. One of the UAE’s leading exhibition centres, the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre (ADNEC), is home to many of the region’s leading shows. DMG’s Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference (ADIPEC) is one to mention. The largest event for the industry in the Middle East began life as a biennial in 1984, a platform for oil and gas professionals to discover new ideas and debate core industry issues in a place which sits at the very heart of the oil and gas industry.

Energy aside, technology and security also have proven strong markets capable of attracting international, rather than just regional, exhibitors. Epoc Messe Frankfurt, which has been present in Dubai since 2002, has been successful here with its three-day security, safety, fire and rescue event Intersec, a show that draws a thousand exhibitors from more than 50 countries.

The former chief of defence and commander-in-chief of the Dutch Armed Forces, General DL Berlijn, helped organise the Dutch pavilion at ADIPEC in 2012. He calls the Middle East “strategically important” for the sector because it brings together players from all over the world. “The UAE has proven to be a place where people want to meet, and Intersec has proven to be a platform for people to network, a good place to establish new contacts from all over the world,” he claims.

While development seems to be at the heart of Dubai, it is clear that the level and intensity of development increased further once it won the rights to host Expo 2020. “The speed of infrastructure development in Dubai is remarkable,” commented president at DMG Events Middle East and Asia, Simon Mellor, at the time. “Throughout the economic crisis Dubai kept building, albeit things slowed, however, the pace has increased and the skyline is again filled with cranes. There are many factors driving this demand, from the Government-backed tourism drive, to the successful positioning of Dubai as the Middle East’s trading hub, but Dubai’s successful bid to host the world Expo 2020 certainly contributed to this growth and opens opportunities for the emirate.

Large-scale infrastructure development took place, not only for the event site itself, but across the city, as roads, services and hotels are all built to service the huge demand such an event puts upon a city. Of course, anyone who has kept up with the pace of development in the UAE knows Dubai is well placed to meet these demands. The Dubai Business Events team was keen to drive home the point that the many infrastructure projects put in place for Expo 2020, including the site itself, are as much for the years post-2020 as they are for the Expo. Such is the impact of a single Expo event, some 169 years after the Great Exhibition filled Sir Joseph Paxton’s Crystal Palace in London in 1851.

This all applies predominantly to trade shows, the global B2B exhibitions. With such a small population and local market, consumer shows are a struggle. However, with a growing population and a time-rich, affluent society, it is only a matter of time before this changes.

Markets do not progress from emerging to developed overnight. There are no quick bucks to be made from a speculative or committed entry into an emerging market, and exhibition organisers must be prepared to play the long game. Long before the spades enter the soil to start the construction of a major exhibition centre or the office of a global organiser, local support for the industry both in terms of provision of service and the generation of willing attendees must be evident if a show is to make any money.

And once established, as has been the case in many more countries than just China, the risks that face an exhibition organiser can be unpredictable; mere private whim can see the government decide almost overnight that they want to take a lot of that newly established business back for themselves or for the public or private sector companies run by their own nationals.  

In Africa, bold moves are being made to develop an exhibition industry by – among others – the 120-year-old British organiser Montgomery. Many organisers have dipped their toes in Africa’s water, the majority quickly removing them again until conditions improve. Montgomery is not one of them. As Damion Angus, the firm’s managing director explains, you need to be truly passionate about the continent if you are to make your business work there.

For all its appeal to exhibition organisers, Africa has no shortage of obstacles to success. And we’re not talking draconian customs and excise law, insular local business practice or language problems. Africa has been and continues to be afflicted by civil war, disease, terrorism and even good old-fashioned piracy. A successful exhibition in some parts of Africa requires a great deal more than contacts and square metres.

Active in Africa since 1967, Montgomery has built a mature local business with brands spanning six core sectors: mining, building and construction, food and hospitality, packaging and printing, and marketing and security. The organiser’s business is based in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region, and from South Africa it has gone to Botswana, up to Zambia in a joint venture with fellow UK organiser Clarion’s local business Spintelligent, and on into markets beyond.

Aside from overcoming socio-political problems that have all but disappeared in developed markets, getting a worthwhile return on beginning an exhibition business where the market is still so small is a deterrent in itself. The SADC region is composed of small markets; for example, Botswana’s tiny population of just 2.2 million makes it difficult to run large shows. And at the region’s heart sits South Africa, the best known and most popular location for international events in Africa. It is home to the best venues and infrastructure for organisers, is accommodating for international visitors, and is seen as an attractive destination for tourists carrying either a suitcase or a backpack. It casts a long shadow over other market opportunities.

The global organisers that are present on the continent use South Africa as a platform with which they hope to entice the whole of Africa. However, inter-Africa trade is pretty small, contributing less than ten per cent of total business at exhibitions; instead, most of the trade is conducted with Western Europe or North America. Trying to get the rest of Africa down to South Africa is, in the words of Damion Angus, a pretty difficult thing to do.

One of the market’s key strengths remains its potential for resource-based events. Montgomery runs the second biggest mining show in the world – South Africa’s Electra Mining – which it used to enter both Botswana and Zambia. Truly global organisers are always looking beyond the borders in which they operate, at further markets for their events. When Montgomery explored joint venture opportunities in South Africa, it was doing so with a mind to replicating any success in new African markets, notably West Africa where it ran a security show titled Securex.

Sadly for this particular region, security is certainly a prudent field in which to have a stake. The Arab Spring at the end of 2010 caused no end of problems across the whole of the Maghreb region, the part of North Africa bordering the Mediterranean Sea, as well as neighbouring Egypt and further east. Libya was one such example of a market that was turned upside down by war. Once appealing to international organisers, it was left in a state whereby it was practically impossible to land a plane carrying either exhibition freight or visitors, such was the war damage sustained by airport runways.

The dogged global exhibition organiser presses on regardless of these setbacks. “We did run a number of shows in Libya, in the oil and gas and infrastructure sectors,” says Angus. “To be honest, despite the issues with early partnerships, Schengen visas, Gaddafi and ultimately war, we found Libya a very lucrative market for the time we were there.”

In the same period, neighbouring Egypt had two rulers and “a couple of uprisings”, as Angus laconically points out, adding that long term it will be a good market. In fact, Angus maintains that there are a lot of good long-term markets in Africa, so long as organisers are willing to accept that there is a high degree of risk that goes with them. “One needs to have a long-term outlook if you are going to take them on,” he suggests.

In extreme cases of course, as we almost saw with Reed Japan’s shows in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, the market just will not follow. 

Montgomery staged a show in Nigeria in 2014, following the much-publicised and terrifying Ebola crisis. Despite registering a number of cases, Nigeria actually managed to control the situation remarkably well, according to Angus. 

“But obviously a disease like Ebola is so horrific that nobody is going to take any risks on contracting it however slim they are, and this had an impact on the shows we have there as well as in South Africa,” he points out.

Montgomery later ran a food show in Johannesburg and had people wanting to pull out for fear of contracting the disease. “It was crazy, if anyone in Nigeria thought they were coming down with Ebola they’d probably jump on a plane to the UK rather than head to South Africa,” says Angus, pointing to a common misconception about Africa – the fact that many people treat it not as a continent but a country.. 

“It was pretty much down to us to phone exhibitors and reassure them, in order to keep them involved. Obviously we lost a lot of internationals, but we still ran the show and had a good event,” he says, echoing Tad Ishizumi’s positive sentiments about 2011 Tokyo.

Montgomery launched the packaging event Propak East Africa in 2013, or rather tried to launch it; the Westgate shopping mall terrorist incident, in which at least 67 people lost their lives during a three-day attack, rocked Nairobi just a few weeks before the show. Montgomery had little option but to postpone it.

So with civil war, active terror cells and often overly sensational media coverage to contend with, exactly how does an organiser turn a campaign to enter these territories into a profitable endeavour? Is it always possible to turn small cogs in an emerging market, and sit back as it gears up for international business? 

“We certainly looked at Africa and decided that the smaller countries are not worth going into at the moment,” concedes Angus. “Instead we try to focus our attention on the ones that we think will be winners. You have to pick which countries you are going for with care.” 

Angus believes that an organiser operating in an emerging market should always be early when launching an event: 

“By the time you wait for things to be right, two or three other organisers are already there and going for it. That’s why launch shows in difficult markets are never very profitable ventures,” he explains. Daring organisers such as Montgomery probably enter their target market before they really should do, but such is the competition for the emerging markets that they must get their marker down in time to ensure longevity. “We probably go in earlier than we know we should be, but that’s purely a result of competition,” he says. The battle for the emerging markets is indeed an intense one.

Success is dependent on keeping conversations going in all of the smaller markets present in an overall target market. While it may have operationally exited Libya, Montgomery has maintained its conversations with existing partners and major stakeholders; in this way it can continue to assess the situation, and as soon as it feels the country is returning to stability – an environment in which it is viable to run an exhibition – it will start putting plans in place to launch again.

Being poised for action is of paramount importance for success in a latent market. “If you look at some of these markets where you could do a rebuild-type show, you almost have to have your plans ready to go, waiting for the opportune moment to dive in,” says Angus. “I agree when people say timing is everything. I don’t think there’s an exact science to it; it’s on a gut feeling. Have enough local conversations and get a strong enough exhibitor base willing to also take that risk, and be there first.”

And of course, a smaller family-run firm such as Montgomery needs to be fleet of foot among the giants that are milling about, observing any progress that they could hope to emulate and snap up territory and geographic markets for themselves. Another player keen to make its presence felt in Africa is the giant –British organiser UBM. David Gallacher-Olsson, commercial director of market development at UBM EMEA, says Africa is one of those really interesting long-term markets where you have to get beneath the surface. 

“There is a way of working, a way of thinking about Africa that goes beyond the normal. It is, after all, 54 countries with differing cultural backgrounds, and therefore it has differing dynamics,” he says. “For example, there isn’t a standard for pharmaceutical ingredients across Africa, which therefore makes the intercontinental trade of pharmaceutical ingredients very complicated. It has some challenging climates and cultures, so therefore it makes running trade shows across Africa very difficult. Obviously there is a lack of large-scale venues, which UBM needs as we run large-scale shows.

“So yes, if you do want to get into Africa it’s about timing and treading carefully. Certain companies have had a go and it’s worked out very well for them. I think we’ve got to choose our time wisely.”

Angus maintains that, as is the case with all emerging markets, you have to take the long-term view. 

“If you’re doing this just to have a pin in the board and say ‘we’re here’, then you’re doing it for the wrong reasons. You need to be pretty passionate about the continent and really enjoy working in the countries themselves, if you are to make it work,” he explains.

When all is said and done there are gains to be made in Africa. The likes of Informa, Clarion or Spintelligent all set out as successful businesses to venture across Africa and they are managing to make it work. But as Angus says, without passion, the chances of emulating their success is slim.

While no individual market can compete with China in terms of sheer magnitude, the world’s focus on South East Asia has led to the development of large exhibition markets in, among other destinations, Singapore. It continues to punch well above its weight in the world of international exhibitions.

Perhaps most interestingly, Singapore, with a population of just five-and-a-half million people, faces much of its fiercest competition internally. Indeed, there is more quality exhibition space in this small city-state than in the whole of India.

Singapore’s market developed at roughly the same time as Hong Kong was developing its own international exhibition industry. The first major steps in the development of international trade fair activity in South East Asia took place here. Just as it is today, Singapore was initially seen by many as the destination of choice for the Asian edition of European shows; it garnered a strong reputation for its pro-business environment and knowledge economy, and supported by reliability, quality, productivity and enforcement of IP rights, it inevitably became one of the world’s leading locations for innovation and research.

Loose parallels between the venues in Hong Kong and Singapore are appropriately drawn for  AsiaWorld-Expo shares much in common with one of Singapore’s largest venues, Singapore Expo, both in location and profile, while HKCEC closely resembles Suntec or – location-wise – Marina Bay Sands. Expand that comparison beyond the venues, however, and the similarities diminish. 

In the early Eighties the Singapore Port Authority began converting warehouse space and re-designating it as exhibition halls. At that point there was relatively little development elsewhere in South East Asia. In time the Authority was to become the owner of Singapore Expo.

Another of the city’s venues, Suntec, also sprang from the Singapore Government’s wish in the mid-Eighties to find a purpose-built facility for hosting major international events. As a result the Suntec Singapore International Convention and Exhibition Centre (Suntec) was developed by private investors and officially opened in 1995, growing to join Singapore Expo as one of the largest multi-purpose convention and exhibition facilities.

These two were joined in 2010 by the imperious three-towered Marina Bay Sands, owned and managed by the Las Vegas-based Sands casino brand. It offered a broader proposition than both of the other venues, adding – in addition to an exhibition hall and casino – a shopping mall, museum, two theatres and an ice-skating rink. It also sits alongside the Formula 1 motor racing circuit.

Its distinct economic history, lacking the large-scale manufacturing base that exists in China and India, means that Singapore generally focuses on non-industrial exhibitions. Increasingly, more technology and lifestyle events are making their presence felt, almost certainly a result of the large number of multinationals based in the city.

“Overall, the exhibition business market in Singapore is still vibrant, although its growth might not have been as fast or robust as cities such as Bangkok, Hong Kong and Shanghai,” admits Edward Liu, group managing director of organisers Conference and Exhibition Management Services Singapore. “None the less, the number of exhibitions is still increasing. Singapore remains an attractive venue for the staging of international exhibitions in view of its regional and strategic hub in the Asia Pacific Rim. This is reinforced by the presence of thousands of multinational corporations with regional headquarters based in Singapore.” 

In much the same way that Hong Kong developed a reputation for facilitating business with the surrounding Chinese market, the ease of doing business in Singapore is the source of much of its allure for international companies. Stephen Tan, chief executive of Singapore Exhibition Services and president of the Allworld Exhibitions Alliance, highlights how simple it is to travel to Singapore, and mentions both the cultural and business measures designed to make the country an appealing destination:

“We have no customs and excise duties except for tobacco, alcohol and cars,” he says. “We also believe there are lower corporate taxes compared to other countries in the region.”

Its exhibition industry also has a reputation for being progressive in nature. For example, the MAX Atria situated at Singapore Expo is both the first MICE venue in Singapore to offer organisers and delegates complimentary high-performance Wi-Fi, and the first to be awarded the Green Mark Platinum sustainability certificate by Singapore’s Building and Construction Authority. Suntec, nearer the centre of the city, claims to be home to the world’s largest video wall.

Much of the industry’s significance is derived from the fact that it feeds its industry by ensuring traction with other elements of the local economy. Singapore Expo, for example, works with local tertiary institutions at different levels of involvement in order to improve the industry’s exposure and appeal to students – the next generation of exhibition organisers and venue management teams. Among the partnering institutions are Singapore’s Institute of Technical Education, where special student attachments and internships are offered. The venue also works with Singapore’s Republic Polytechnic to offer students the chance to experience events as part of their curriculum. The provision of earning opportunities for future industry leaders helps to sustain the inventive and progressive culture that has enabled little Singapore to maintain such a high profile in the global exhibition marketplace.

Singapore’s reputation for forward-thinking business practices has also led to the establishment of international partnerships, much like we’ve already seen with the German venues and their international organising arms. Suntec, through its Suntec International division, forged a partnership with the Adelaide Convention Centre in Australia, which saw it assume sales and marketing duties to bring business from South East Asia and Australia, shared between both venues.

“The type of industries that Singapore is strong in differs from Hong Kong, Indonesia and Malaysia,” says Suntec spokesman Ong Wee Min. “In many ways, we are less brick and mortar and more content and high technology driven because of the type of industries present in the country.”

The city-state is also able to play quite heavily on its compact nature, another draw for any destination trying to attract international business travellers. Outside of the exhibition hall, people like to feel they have some sort of understanding of the places they visit. Singapore actively trades on this fact. 

Resorts World Sentosa, based on an island in Singapore’s south, is a partner of Suntec. According to the venue’s business event vice-president Paul Stocker, Singapore continues to grow as a tourist destination, with attractions such as the world’s largest oceanarium at the Marine Life Park and its famous night safari continuing to attract new and returning tourists. He claims – justifiably – that Singapore has come a long way in a short time: “The development of this island nation from a small fishing village to a modern world city in less than 50 years has been nothing short of extraordinary, and brings with it a stable government focused on economic development and infrastructure,” he explains. “Another of the country’s pertinent characteristics is its strong governance and planning. Singapore is well known for its infrastructure and as a port city, but less so as a tourist destination.”

Perhaps the toughest task for Singapore is that of presenting it as an attractive destination for wider tourism business. Exhibitions and large-scale business events are much else besides a hall full of temporary stands, buyers and sellers. The city-state sits on the Malay Archipelago, which it shares with hot tourist destinations such as Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. Further north you have Thailand, another strong and ambitious destination for business events. While Thailand is known around the world for the Full Moon Party that attracts hundreds of thousands of revellers every year, Singapore is known around the world for a particularly stringent law on dropping chewing gum in public. It’s no easy feat to compete with these other locations for post- and pre-event activities, and it is this fact that perhaps explains Singapore’s intense drive to appeal to the trade show and convention market. 

The desire to combat its slightly sterile image is what drove the Singapore Government to revamp the nation’s tourism landscape in 2005 by introducing the concept of integrated resorts; it is hoped that integrated resorts will prompt tourists from around the world to reconsider Singapore as a destination, both for business and leisure.

The formation in 2015 of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), which took the Association of South East Asian Nations established in 1967, introduced economic integration initiatives in an effort to create a single market across all member nations, that really began a significant new chapter in Singapore’s development. It was to be a catalyst for the foundation of numerous collaborations and partnerships in South East Asia. This means that facilities and services aside, today Singapore provides access to a common market of 600 million across the ASEAN region.

Among the AEC’s other benefits, the development of a single market and production base, increased fairness in economic development, and increased regional representation and integration with the wider global economy strengthens the individual industrial prowess of all its member states. Its key areas of co-operation play very well into Singapore’s hands. Development of human resources, a focus on professional qualifications, trade financing, improved infrastructure and communications connectivity and the development of electronic transactions, alongside closer consultation on macroeconomic and financial policies are already evident in Singapore. Indeed, to some extent Singapore is the model on which such regional aspirations may be based.

It also enables Singapore, by association with the AEC, to compete more directly with the alliance illustrated in the previous chapter between China and Hong Kong. Integrating industries across the region for joint promotion of regional sourcing and improved private sector involvement, for such a large combined population, makes the AEC perhaps the leading market for commercial sourcing and natural resources. China already sources many of its raw materials from South East Asia, and facilitated by the free movement of skilled labour, goods, services and plentiful external and internal investment, the ASEAN alliance will surely make its mark as a single market. 

In idealistic terms, with each member’s strength now the sum of each other’s strengths, Singapore can rightly be expected to benefit greatly from its already prominent reputation. It can offset its shortcomings as a colourful destination through association with its more populous and glamorous neighbours. As with the foundation of the European Union in 1993 or the Gulf Cooperation Council of 1981 (now the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf), this expanded alliance is likely to improve Singapore’s profile and cement its appeal as a central point of contact with the rest of the South East Asian nations.

The region is working hard to develop these relationships. In Thailand, for example, the director of the exhibition department at the national convention and exhibition bureau TCEB, Supawan Teerarat, said that as head of a government agency dedicated to promoting the exhibition industry, she is “keenly aware” of the importance of regional cooperation to boost the growth of the exhibition industry:

“We expect the economic integration within ASEAN to drive a major expansion of the exhibition industry in South East Asia,” she says. “It is therefore crucial to develop multi-faceted bilateral co-operation with other member countries to contribute to ASEAN prosperity and development in the region.” 

Besides established exhibitions such as Food & Hotel Asia, Communic Asia and the Singapore Airshow, Singapore is well known for its financial and medical services, hosting several regular international congresses. More and more established events are consolidating their positions in Asia, while newer events are entering, catering to niche segments. At the same time, large international exhibition organisers such as Reed, UBM and ITE are using Singapore as a base to reach out directly to places such as Malaysia and Indonesia, both registering strong economic growth and development in recent years.

Michelle Lim, Reed’s managing director for Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, says Singapore has a competitive advantage over the rest of the region in a variety of sectors:

“Singapore is known to be a strong maritime hub, champions the green built environment, and these have worked well for APM and BEX Asia,” she points out. “Its small country size and neutrality for media content development means it would not be seen as overshadowing the market on content rights and culture development issues. Singapore’s strong IP rights has also helped in events such as [originally Paris-based event] Maison&Objet.”

Reed’s other events include Asia Pacific Maritime, Asia Television Forum/Screen Singapore, Build Eco Xpo Asia and the Singapore Toys Games & Comic Convention. Evidently, this organiser sees Singapore as a market of choice for its ‘Asia’ show editions.

Of course, operating in Singapore is not always straightforward, even for Reed.  “With Singapore being ranked most expensive city for expatriates recently in one of the reports, it does provide challenges to attract exhibitors and visitors as the overall participation costs are perceived to be a lot higher than that of our neighbouring countries,” says Lim. “As such, Singapore needs to continue to improvise and provide differentiation and value-added experience.”

Lim also believes Singapore needs to spend time bringing more of the ASEAN region to its events: “As customers and industries increasingly operate on a global scale, there are expectations for Singapore events to deliver more regional visitors to the events,” she says. “Singapore’s status as a business events hub supported by regional connectivity, overall efficiency, quality hotels and MICE facilities and multi-lingual populace will remain relevant and competitive. Singapore will need to enhance its total offering to improve on visitor experience.”

One of the initiatives on which Singapore is taking a global lead is in focusing on attracting business clusters, as opposed to individual events. Business travellers are a particularly time-poor lot, and it is hoped that the act of amalgamating events that span common industries will improve the city’s global marketing. “Business travellers are often strapped for time when attending overseas exhibitions and conferences. Clustering or co-locating complementary business events allows them to optimise their business trips and maximise networking opportunities across the different events, within the same eco-system,” says Andrew Phua, director of exhibitions and conferences at the Singapore Tourism Board (STB).

An example of this is the cluster event Singapore Design Week, which took place in March 2014 and featured local and international design trade shows (for example, International Furniture Fair Singapore and Maison&Objet Asia), conferences, showcases, exhibitions and workshops spanning various design disciplines.

Another cluster event, TravelRave, gathers together travel business events such as the Asia Travel Leaders Summit and ITB Asia every October. TravelRave has been created by STB to provide a platform for thought leaders in the travel and tourism industry to come together, exchange insights and explore opportunities offered by the growth of tourism in Asia.

“In the past, our focus was more volume-driven, with the aim of attracting a high number of events. In recent years, we started to take a more visitor-centric approach, and our focus is now more quality-driven,” says Phua. “Today, a deeper understanding of delegate needs and strengthening the industry capabilities to meet those needs, form the basis of proposing the right products and services to international organisers.

“Singapore has built strengths in industries such as biomedical and healthcare, banking and finance, science and technology, design, travel, media and digital content and urban solutions. Our focus is therefore on attracting MICE events that complement these industries,” says Phua.

The rise of the exhibition market in Asia has also provided further opportunities, given Singapore’s global trade and communications networks and ability to provide market access and facilitate trade flows between Asia, the Pacific and the rest of the world. By drawing established industry players, opinion leaders and decision makers from around the globe, these events augment Singapore’s position as a thought leader and knowledge hub in the region.

Singapore remains one of the first and most successful events markets in South East Asia. But with all this space in such a small destination, is there an argument for there being too many venues in Singapore? 

Marc Bakker, Suntec’s marketing director thinks not. His venue underwent a SGD184m modernisation programme in June 2013, and today offers 42,000sqm of customisable space designed to minimise turnaround times and seamlessly transition from exhibition hall to conference space to ballroom. “The MICE industry in Asia has always operated in a competitive business climate,” he says. “As such, having a wider choice of venues in Singapore, combined with the country’s natural vibrancy and attractions, has raised the profile of Singapore as an appealing MICE destination overall.” 

In other words, he believes that there is a halo effect from the presence of so many international-standard venues in Singapore that benefits the whole industry. But as is the case in any competitive market, success requires sufficient differentiation in order to facilitate that degree of specialisation that allows a product – in this case the venues – to carve out their own niche. The global demand evidently still exists.

As a thriving financial centre and an important information exchange and trading hub, Singapore provides the essential conditions for businesses looking to establish a foothold in the Asian marketplace. “With increasing competition from the region, including South Korea, Hong Kong and Thailand, Singapore needs to continuously evolve and be more diligent in attracting international event organisers,” says the CEO of Singapore Expo’s parent company SingEx, Aloysius Arlando. “It needs to pull the entire MICE industry together to see how we can add more value, and address the exacting needs of international organisers.”

Singapore is an appealing destination to exhibition and meeting organisers due to its combination of a vibrant business ecosystem, robust economy and knowledge networks, and diverse leisure activities; it is, for some organisers, the most strategic location in a resurgent Asia.

One of the founding rules of commerce is to place your stall where the market can see it, where it is most likely to walk past it. Once you’ve got visibility then you can provide a product or service to satisfy – or perhaps create – a demand.

This is the story of Hong Kong’s rise as one of Asia’s preeminent exhibition destinations.

The arrival of Hong Kong on the landscape of international exhibitions can be attributed, perhaps unsurprisingly, to two major exhibitions in China. The Canton Fairs, which still exist today, were established in Guangzhou (formerly Canton) in the Guangdong Province in 1957. Taking place every spring and autumn, these huge events provided arguably the most comprehensive offering of any truly international exhibitions, and are responsible for linking a numerous and diverse group of exhibitors with a global set of buyers. The exhibitions created countless business leads, and generated some of the greatest retail business turnover in China. For many years, when China was otherwise closed, these shows provided the only window for the world to see and buy what the country was producing.

Reaching Guangdong Province from overseas required a port capable of handling vast numbers of visitors on the way in, and a vast number of products on the way out. It demanded, and still demands, straightforward and amenable import and export practice, accessibility and – equally importantly – an ability to accommodate and cater for a wide variety of international travellers.

Being home to such an influx of international visitors, it wasn’t long before visionary entrepreneurs took the liberty of tapping into the passing trade with exhibitions of their own. 

Enter Hong Kong. One of two Special Administrative Regions (SARs) belonging to China, alongside its Pearl River Delta neighbour Macau, the city has seven million inhabitants, and crucially around eight per cent of these (570,000 people) hold foreign passports. Both Chinese and English are accepted as official languages here, harking back to the period of British rule from 1842 to 1997. The Canton Fairs may still have the space and the volume but, for now at least, Hong Kong has the service and the quality.

There was, in fact, some tradition of exhibitions in Hong Kong pre-dating the industry’s desire to capitalise on the Canton Fairs; exhibitions in Hong Kong go back at least to the 1930s, courtesy of the Chinese Manufacturers Association and its annual Hong Kong Product Expo, aimed largely at the general public. Events took place on various areas of open ground in Hong Kong, using temporary structures. However, in terms of the modern exhibition industry, Hong Kong became perhaps Asia’s leading exhibition hub on the back of these two events. 

Hong Kong’s Trade Development Council (TDC), the leading player in the story of an emerging global exhibitions industry in the city and Asia more widely, was established in the early Seventies to promote trade. Known in Hong Kong as a statutory body, the TDC was not a government department, but was created instead by the Legislative Council on the back of an act of law. It was funded by a levy on Hong Kong exports, in effect a small tax on the value of all exports, which in the days when Hong Kong was a manufacturing hub was a significant figure. With those days now in Hong Kong’s past, exhibition activities are now the TDC’s single largest source of income. 

Hong Kong’s exhibition activity really began in the Seventies, with many events taking place in the building called the World Trade Centre in Causeway Bay – then called the Hong Kong Convention Centre. A lot of the early fairs took place in the ballroom of the now-demolished Hilton Hotel, which was for many years the largest such space in Hong Kong.

The fairs began as spring and autumn fairs, selling gifts and toys, piggybacking the crowds of buyers winding their way up the Pearl River to the Canton Fairs. Between 1949 and 1979, when China was closed to the world, it was really the only way in which visitors could enter and buy Chinese-made products. And in those days the only way to get to Guangzhou was to go to Hong Kong and take the train. So the city certainly had no shortage of predictable passing trade.

In time a few private companies began to get involved and take advantage of this fact. The early Eighties saw the involvement of internationally focused companies such as AdSale, founded the previous decade by Stanley Chu to sell advertising for mainland Chinese companies looking to promote themselves to the rest of the world. This type of company was perfectly positioned to embrace and facilitate the needs of overseas companies with an eye on China.

In 1982 the Hong Kong Trade Fair was launched to sell everything from printing machinery to Jaguar cars. As the only international trade fair in Hong Kong at the time, its remit was understandably unconfined. It first took place on the roof of Ocean Terminal, the passenger terminal that sticks out into the harbour beside the Star Ferry port on the Kowloon side. The second year it was held in Kowloon Park, which had just been vacated by the British Army. Such was the profile of the event that it counted among its esteemed visitors the governor of Hong Kong; it is inconceivable that his equivalent would attend such a thing today.

While only in its second edition, the event had already demonstrated Hong Kong’s need for dedicated exhibition space. 

The Hong Kong Government was in the process of turning Kowloon Park into a green lung for the city, envisioned more for morning activities, Tai Chi practitioners, lunch breaks and weekend walks rather than a commercial event on such a grand scale. It rained very heavily at this second edition of the fair and despite laying duckboards, the busy and boggy end result wasbattlefield  rather less business-like than participants were hoping. 

Shortly afterwards the Government approved plans to build a proper convention and exhibition centre. The TDC had been lobbying for this for a number of years, and the purpose-built facilities Hong Kong so desperately needed were on their way.

China Resources, a subsidiary of China’s specifically designated Ministry of Foreign Trade, also constructed a building titled the Hong Kong Exhibition Centre, offering just 2,500sqm of indoor space. This was quickly outgrown of course, and the exhibition area spilled into the adjoining shopping centres. Local firms were called upon to try and squeeze more floorspace out of the neighbouring areas. In one example of the desperate measures being taken, a local corporate event and management firm, Pico, was commissioned to fashion aluminium panels into an extensive ad hoc air conditioning system that extended beyond the walls of the centre into the car park of the nearby Great Eagle Centre, giving the organisers around 8,000sqm of usable space.

But the Hong Kong Exhibition Centre was destined to be a mere appetiser for the city’s growing appetite for events. 

It wasn’t until 1987 that phase one of the new Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (HKCEC), a building that remains as one of Hong Kong’s most iconic landmarks, opened on the Victoria Harbour.

[X-HEAD] Building giants

The story of the development of Hong Kong’s first large exhibition centre demonstrates the way in which private enterprise can work with a government to bring benefit to a city. And the model for its creation is far removed from the model that had provided such space for cities in Germany.

In 1987, as remains the case today, there was no freehold land in Hong Kong; back then, all land was owned by the Queen of England, her counterpart today being the Hong Kong Government. The Government essentially gave the land for the development of the HKCEC to the TDC, which in turn awarded construction rights to the commercial property developer New World Development.

In simple terms, the deal enabled the TDC to develop the venue and the associated facilities surrounding it, by granting it ‘air rights’. A curious-sounding concept, but essentially any space above the 11th floor of the new venue was New World’s to do with as it wished. In addition to the funding for the convention centre, the property developer could expect to make its money from the two hotels, an office tower and an apartment building that comprised the four towers built into the first phase of the HKCEC’s development. The convention centre element belonged to the TDC. 

A subsidiary of New World was then formed to manage the convention centre, the daily operation of the HKCEC. To this day it operates and collects all revenues from the exhibition and convention centre, and in return for that privilege it pays the TDC a fee from the revenue the venue makes.

In time the second phase was commissioned by the Hong Kong Government, specifically to house the handover ceremony in 1997, whereby Hong Kong was returned to China by the British. It was developed with the TDC’s input and would continue as an exhibition and convention centre after the ceremony had taken place, again owned by the TDC and managed by the HKCEC’s management firm.

This public–private collaborative model for venue development would only work in a city with a strong property market such as you have in Hong Kong, explains UFI managing director and long-time Hong Kong resident Paul Woodward, pointing out the similarity between this development and that of Hong Kong’s Mass Transit Railway (MTR). “The railway in Hong Kong is very cheap to use because the developer owns the air rights to all of the stations, which it takes advantage of by building commercial property above the MTR stations,” he observes. While the company owns and runs an underground railway, to all intents and purposes it is a massive property company.

Hong Kong, through an inventive and collaborative relationship between the public and private sectors, now had an exhibition and convention centre that would become a significant part of the city’s social and economic infrastructure.

There are few countries where private investment has built convention and exhibition centres, the majority having been developed by governments in order to incentivise trade and bring business to the cities that house them. “It’s quite a different model. It wasn’t like the exhibition industry had been conjured out of the air and nobody had ever seen one before. But it’s nothing like the tradition of the fairs that exist in Germany,” says Woodward. 

At this point there were very few international players in the market. Reed was doing something, and Messe Frankfurt came in fairly early on in the late Eighties, as part of their first overseas projects. But none the less, the TDC’s exhibition portfolio quickly came to fill it up, as did others such as the Asia-Pacific Leather Fair. 

However, high occupancy aside, the dominance of a single venue in a city soon becomes a point of consternation for people looking to bring global exhibitions to the market. The TDC’s market share in Hong Kong was about 60 per cent, a fact that was making exhibition organisers increasingly uncomfortable. So the Hong Kong Exhibition and Convention Industry Association and leading players lobbied the Government for more facilities. 

The location of Hong Kong’s second major exhibition venue, AsiaWorld-Expo (AWE), was easy to select in a city with such paucity of space. Otherwise unusable but well connected ground at the end of the airport runway, where development could not be high-rise, was an obvious choice. With plans in place, the airport authority came in for ten per cent, French construction group Dragages, a division of Bouygues Construction, also became an investor, with the majority being owned by the Government. 

For obvious reasons the venue was to be a direct competitor to the TDC, which had a strong vested interest in high occupancy at the HKCEC. So in order to guarantee the new venue would be used, the team developing AWE went out to the global market and invited bids for tenancy. Companies were at first cautious, until the little-known publisher Global Sources, long intent on moving into the live events space, confirmed it would take all of the space two or three times in the spring, autumn and winter.

So how has the exhibition industry evolved since then and what is Hong Kong’s place in the global exhibition arena today? Well, since the construction of this infrastructure that has proved so critical to Hong Kong’s exhibition industry, the city has certainly found a niche for its trade shows.

In 2014 Hong Kong International Airport handled 63.3 million passengers and 4.38 million tonnes of cargo, carried by 100 airlines from 160 destinations. Every day 490,000 people and 45,000 vehicles cross from the mainland, while a further 60,000 people make the trip by ferry. Lo Wu, a town in the middle of Hong Kong’s border with China, handles a quarter of a million migrants every day.

As time passed, HKCEC and AWE were able to offer 66,000sqm and 70,000sqm of dedicated exhibition space respectively. As it stands today, of the two it is the HKCEC that sits on the more attractive real estate, located in Hong Kong Island’s colourful Wanchai district as part a mixed-use development titled ‘Convention Place’. In the west, on Lantau Island, AWE can make the claim of being the larger venue for exhibitions, and located more conveniently beside the airport.

And there’s business a-plenty taking place within its walls. Even in the wake of the global financial crisis, an independent report by corporate assessment firm KPMG claims expenditure effects relating to exhibition and conference activities at AWE rose 25 per cent from 2009 to 2010, to HK$13.4bn (US$1.72bn). AWE’s economic impact on Hong Kong’s economy is claimed at more than HK$55bn for the period 2006–2010.

China’s increased buying power continues to help. Visitors from the mainland accounted for more than a third of total visitors in 2014. More importantly, these visitors accounted for almost 40 per cent of total exhibition visitor expenditure, up from 31 per cent the previous year. While Hong Kong used to be a showcase for products from China, a window through which the world could view Chinese products and trade with confidence and legal recourse, today it sits on the doorstep of one of the largest buying markets in the world.

Invest HK is a quasi-governmental organisation responsible for bringing new business to Hong Kong. Director general of investment promotion Simon Galpin (who also happens to be a director at AWE) says companies of all sizes are attracted to Hong Kong because of the security, protection of intellectual property rights including recourse through established international courts, and low tax rates. All factors that impact on the full spectrum of companies from the very large to very small. 

“One of the misconceptions about Hong Kong is that we’re only for big buyers,” says Galpin. “But actually it’s for SMEs and microenterprises. To begin a company in Hong Kong you need one director, one Hong Kong dollar (minimum start-up capital) and one hour to register your company online. Getting set up on the mainland would take months.”

Galpin spends a lot of time identifying companies that should have a base in Hong Kong, and interestingly it’s not just companies heading for China but companies heading for South East Asia that are showing interest. While Bangkok and Singapore present more obvious claims to the title of premier regional hub, he believes that Hong Kong has the market and the prerequisite qualities of market infiltration and accessibility.

In addition, and contrary to other countries where the practice is more complicated, it is possible to extract the full stock of your company once the timing is right without penalty. Effectively here today, gone tomorrow if that’s all part of your plan or – woe betide – the market spits you out.

Half of the world’s registered consumer and trade shows take place in North America. Its exhibition market size, the largest in the world for a single nation, makes it an attractive prospect for investment.

But that’s only part of the story.

While one could be forgiven for thinking mature markets are given short shrift in the strategic announcements of today’s emerging-market-focused organisers, there is no denying that the US still presents international investors with an exciting prospect for business. The culture and appetite for exhibitions is deeply ingrained in America’s industry.

As we’ve already discovered, the European system is typified by the fact that most of the big fairgrounds – for example the German messe – are owned by individual cities. Over time many of the great European cities have appointed in-house staff and created organising bodies tasked with producing shows; this is the case at venues such as Messe Düsseldorf, Amsterdam RAI and IFEMA Madrid. In essence, the large fairgrounds own the shows, and more often than not, also produce the shows.

We’ve seen from the genesis of the German exhibition industry that the fairgrounds typically co-ordinate with, and get the support of, the appropriate industry associations. For example, in Germany the VDMA is the major association for machinery, with seven divisions supporting the major fairgrounds in producing their events. Cohesion is also strong in Germany, with exhibition industry association AUMA seeking subsidies for shows, both domestically and internationally, with funds passed through the association by the actively promotional government. That said, in the last 15 to 20 years Germany has, of course, seen greater international collaboration, with large independent organisers entering the market and leasing or renting the fairgrounds to produce their own shows.

In the US they do things differently. The convention centres are usually built by the city, often funded by hotel room night taxes, and used by multi-purpose industries, accommodating both consumer and trade associations. For the most part, these venues do not make a profit. Instead they serve as a conduit to bring in associations and provide revenue for the city, its hotels, restaurants, local businesses, taxis and so on.

The profile of the event organiser is different too. Events in the US are run predominantly by associations, often without the involvement of professional organisers; the potential rewards for a keen-eyed and connected overseas entrepreneur armed with innovative views and a black book of international contacts are great and can take a company a long way. For example, in America the major trade associations and groups developed events for the machinery and industrial equipment industries.

As Ned Krause, founder of one of America’s longest-standing professional organisers EJ Krause, explains: “Shows for packaging, plastics, oil and gas and so on, were started by associations and became a major revenue source for the associations, in order to provide lobbying activities, market research and support for the industry. In recent years many of the smaller to medium associations have begun selling their exhibitions or producing joint ventures with private industry in order to be more cost efficient. Many of the medium and smaller size associations also contract out to private industry to do the exhibition part of the event.” In the last quarter of a century, for-profit companies such as EJ Krause have been actively developing and producing events, bringing creativity to the association marketplace. The largest of them have also been very active in the acquisition market.

As an aside here, it is worth mentioning that for all its undoubted particularities, a keen-eyed and connected overseas entrepreneur armed with innovative views and a black book of international contacts could still take a tyro company a long way in the US market.

Today, the US is by some margin the largest national exhibition market in the world for exhibitions and conventions, but to understand why that is so, you have to trace the story back to the dawn of the Sixties.

While industrial exhibitions have been held in the US for more than 100 years, typically at trade mart-type facilities, the first purpose-built exhibition centres were not constructed until 1959. That year a small exhibition hall with 50,000 gross square feet (4,645sqm) feet was added on to the Rotunda in Las Vegas, Nevada. The next year, McCormick Place in Chicago opened, with some 500,000 square feet of exhibition space and 50,000 square feet of meeting space.

Several cities in America’s south, including Dallas, Houston, New Orleans, Atlanta and Orlando, followed in building convention centres in the Sixties and Seventies. Of the major American cities, one of the last to enter the competition for events was, perhaps surprisingly, New York. While it could lay claim to the Coliseum and Madison Square Garden, it was losing the race for exhibition space compared with a dozen other cities. This was perhaps due to the fact that politicians could not agree on what to build in terms of a venue that could compete; disagreements over the issue of where to build were an added complication.

Finally, in 1977 a letter written to the mayor of New York by Richard Ravitch (who latterly served as lieutenant governor of New York) outlined the results of the work an obscure committee had done on what to build and where to build it. Ravitch’s recommendation ultimately prevailed with the mayor, and on its back the Jacob K. Javitz Convention Center, designed by renowned architect IM Pei, opened in 1986.

New York and Chicago adopted a model of filling their calendar with annual events booked for multiple years. Most other cities had one or two major annual events (not counting public or consumer-gated shows such as motor shows, lawn and garden or boat shows) while New York and Chicago had several. Once Las Vegas became a more acceptable destination, it pursued annual business relentlessly and won the bid to host a number of events, such as the Hardware Show. The combination of lower costs to the organisers and convenient and less expensive hotel rooms for the visitors proved a persuasive argument.

Doug Ducate spent 15 years leading the Center for Exhibition Industry Research (CEIR), and for most of his career prior to that he worked in the oil and gas industry, producing exhibitions in virtually every oil-producing province around the world. He says that the advent of what are mostly called convention centres in the US (more commonly referred to as exhibition centres in Europe and Asia) was prompted by two significant events occurring around the same time. First, was the completion of the interstate highway system, and secondly the commercial introduction of the jet plane. It was these two watershed developments that made it possible to travel cross country to attend a three- or four-day event.

“Destinations recognised the economic impact of out-of-town visitors and, as they saw the advent of major exhibitions, they rushed to build facilities,” says Ducate. “They recognised that a destination needed three main elements to host these events: air carriage, hotel rooms and a facility large enough to house the events.”

With the introduction of the jet airplane, these cities got the air carriage they needed, and since most cities had some hotel room inventory the obvious way to complete the package and compete for convention business was build a facility. Local voters were asked to approve the use of public funds to build centres by introducing a hotel occupancy tax (HOT). According to Ducate, the pitch for this potentially divisive move was that the cost to build the convention centre would be paid for by the taxes collected from the visitors, while the entire community stood to benefit from the money those visitors would leave in the city:

“To attract business, the destinations charge very low usage fees to the organisers, choosing instead to use the facility as a loss leader offset by the economic impact of the visitor taxes and money spent,” he says. Many cities have since levied fees on other visitor services such as restaurant meals and rental cars. In most major cities, the HOT can be between 15 and 20 per cent of the hotel cost. Destinations also sell features or benefits. Features can be natural, such as the Rocky Mountains, Lake Michigan or San Francisco Bay, or they can be man-made such as Disneyland, gaming houses or the French Quarter in New Orleans. Cities without comparable features – Dallas and Atlanta come to mind – sell benefits such as significant air carriage from around the globe and reasonable hotel room rates and restaurant prices.

What happens in Vegas … resonates around the world

More than half of the 10,000 business-to-business exhibitions are held in just 16 US cities, but Las Vegas remains perhaps the best known of all the exhibition and convention destinations in the world. The city hosts the largest number of events in the US, with Chicago and Orlando vying for second place. The other 13 US exhibition cities vary from year to year as many of the exhibitions rotate among various cities.

But it is Vegas that stands above all others. A permanent market exists to cater for attendees at its events, with gambling, shows and plenty else to keep the attendees and exhibitors occupied. Indeed, the city has for many years gleefully traded on its reputation as ‘Sin City’. It was the destination of choice for conventioneers out to enjoy themselves, and for exhibition attendees looking to blow off steam after a long day on the show floor. It continues to hold this attraction today with its wry catch-line ‘What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas’.

However, this was not always so. Ducate believes that what changed over time was that the many features and benefits offered by Las Vegas came to outweigh the moral imperative not to be seen there. “What was seen to be sinful in the 1960s and 1970s is now culturally acceptable in the eyes of most Americans,” he observes. “And such things as casino gambling have now spread across the country, as cities and states thirsty for revenue recognised the huge potential gaming offers.”

It is now unlikely that any other major destination can afford to outdo Las Vegas. The local needs of residents require political leaders to focus on solving local problems and pursue economic development by emphasising business relocations and tourism more than conventions. “It seems equally unlikely that the enlightened leadership of Las Vegas will turn its back on the very lucrative meetings and exhibitions business. Given the current trend of accepting lower moral standards than what existed in the US 50 years ago, it is doubtful the label ‘Sin City’ will scare anyone away today,” says Ducate.

Besides dealing with its initial image problem, Las Vegas faced major regional competition from Los Angeles and San Francisco, then later Anaheim and San Diego. But as these California destinations competed for business and built facilities, they did so knowing that they had limited resources and had to fund other infrastructure for the rapidly growing state. As a result they could only build what was politically possible, not what the market demanded. They then could not expand their facilities fast enough to meet demand.

Las Vegas, on the other hand, had an enlightened leadership and developers with very, very deep pockets who were willing to continue to build more space and expand the Las Vegas Convention Center to meet the insatiable needs of growing exhibitions. They reached out to the international community and offered incentives for international flights and also expanded the domestic airlift. And once again, unlike most cities, they were willing to invest the money to modernise and expand the airport to accommodate the additional traffic.

Doug Ducate puts it succinctly: “Organisers began to recognise what may have been a reluctance to go to Las Vegas or be seen in Las Vegas had melted away, and without that stigma they happily booked events that then recorded record numbers and revenue.” “When the major conservative faith-based group, the Southern Baptist Convention, chose Las Vegas for their event, whatever stigma may have been attached to going to Las Vegas was gone forever.”

A strange phenomenon occurred as a result of Las Vegas’ transition into a business events destination of choice. Organisers not only had record numbers, they also found what later came to be known as ‘conscience attendance’. The exhibition floor and the meeting rooms were overflowing with attendees apparently eager to be seen attending the event, and not off playing golf or sitting in a casino. It was a good way to appear earnest in your approach to work and partnership. One is reminded of the Stanford marshmallow experiments on delayed gratification.

While the Las Vegas Convention Center built new space to accommodate changing organiser needs, two privately owned hotels, the Sands and Mandalay Bay, built their own exhibition halls, and each has more than one million square feet, giving organisers even more options. The venue today totals more than two million square feet. Among its most prominent shows is the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which is attended by industry and celebrities and covered by mainstream media around the world.

Lew Shomer, the former president of US exhibition organiser association SISO, puts much of the ascent of Vegas as a leading destination down to the arrival of another technology show in 1979, the year Boston-born Comdex made its Vegas debut. This was when the US-based magazine Trade Show World began its list of the largest 200 shows, and people started to see that so many of the larger shows were in Vegas. “Although CES was big and in Vegas, Sheldon Adelson created a circus atmosphere with Comdex; that is when Vegas got the attention that it was the destination,” he says. “Don’t forget back then there were like 8,000 rooms; now there are over 100,000, I believe. I still think Comdex changed the way everyone saw Vegas.”

Las Vegas aside, the US exhibition industry experienced rapid growth in the last quarter of the 20th century. That in large part was fostered by non-profit associations. “All associations represent a community of individuals or companies with common interests. It is natural for these groups to want to meet,” explains Doug Ducate. “And since they normally have a supply side the idea of adding an exhibition component becomes a natural tie-in.” Many associations today rely on the non-dues revenue generated by their exhibitions.

Of the 10,000 or so exhibitions held in the US each year, around two-thirds are owned by associations. According to the CEIR Index Report, 74 per cent of these occupy less than 50,000 net square feet of exhibit space. That is the result of some large horizontal exhibitions that have been carved into multiple vertical silos or niche events.

Two good examples of this phenomenon are the healthcare industry and the sporting goods industry. The American Medical Association and the American Hospital Association both produce annual meetings that used to have major exhibition components; now, neither has an exhibition. Instead, the exhibitions have been left to the smaller specialty healthcare groups such as cardiologists, family physicians and ophthalmologists. The result, according to Ducate, is that the healthcare sector has the largest number of exhibitions, with some 17.6 per cent of the 10,000 total because each speciality has its own annual meeting and its own exhibition.

The sporting goods industry also had a major horizontal event owned first by the retailers then later by the manufacturers. The event does not exist anymore in the same format, a result of the industry fragmenting into speciality events for golf, tennis, skiing and so on. Today, the computer-based IT industry appears headed in the same direction with the elimination of horizontal events. The CES stands as an exception to the fragmentation, although it too is seeing some of its major exhibitors – Apple and Microsoft – branch out into their own, single brand events.

Yet the exhibition centres are also branching out. Some are now looking at producing shows, particularly in the consumer arena. “This is potentially controversial due to the fact that they may compete with the organisers that are producing events in their facilities,” comments Ducate.
It certainly was controversial in 2010. Back then Chicago mayor Richard Daley suggested that the city’s McCormick Place Convention Center, then the largest in the US, lay off “99 per cent” of its employees and instead allow show organisers to hire their own contractors.
The venue had been losing a string of large shows due to the high service costs associated with the unions, and was desperately re-evaluating its policies to discourage further events from moving to cities such as Las Vegas.
Some organisers took the opportunity to publicly blame the Chicago unions and exhibitor costs as part of the reason for leaving. The city took note and, in response, made the unprecedented move of forgoing exclusive electrical service and catering contracts for McCormick Place.

“When the purpose built centres were built, it was a common practice for the buildings to designate certain services that invaded the building systems as exclusive,” says Ducate. “These typically included telephones (usually switchboard style), electrical, plumbing including natural gas, and food and beverage. Over time some of the services such as telephones faded away. Buildings learned how to zone electrical, so a bad connection in the exhibit hall no longer threatened total building electrical.”

Even though the reasons for the exclusive contracts had disappeared, most had become a source of revenue that helped defray building operating costs that exceeded the rental revenue.
The battle between the unions and those seeking to remove these exclusive contracts reached a peak in 2010. Speaking to reporters after the formal opening of the BIO 2010 convention at McCormick Place, Mayor Daley said the venue should cut almost all its staff, rent the space out, and allow organisers to “take the space, and contract everything out.”
“They get their own contractors and sub-contractors. They get their own workers. They do everything for the show, and McCormick Place does nothing except rent the space. Get out of that business. It should be basically a shell,” he said.
Jim Greenwood, the CEO of the Biotechnology Industry Organisation (a McCormick Place client that attracted 15,000 attendees with each event, bringing around USD$25m into the city’s economy), said competition for the show from other venues was stiff. “Certainly Chicago is an expensive place to hold a convention,” he conceded. “If it becomes less expensive to hold a convention in Chicago, we’ll be more likely to come back,” he added.
In time, the Illinois State Legislature provided an annual US$20m subsidy to McCormick Place for three years to offset the electrical and catering revenue loss.

Ducate says the US industry believed this dramatic shift in Chicago would trigger changes in other major destinations, but to date it has not happened. “What is interesting about the point is that today several destinations are organising their own events to fill their dark days,” he says. “That was always considered high risk since you could effectively compete with a potential travelling event that refused to come because of the event the building is producing.”

None the less, the Chicago standoff, as well as developments in terms of the shift towards professional exhibition and trade show management, has had a strong effect in globalising the US exhibition marketplace. The resulting shift from the historic practice of leadership coming to the US from the UK or Europe has in some places been reversed. “Watching Americans trek off to the UK to run the largest exhibition organiser’ companies appears to signal an historic shift,” proclaims Ducate.

America continues to be the land of opportunity and whether it’s Las Vegas, Chicago, New York, Atlanta or San Diego, it’s possible to make an exhibition business work if the offering is right. The market remains progressive, or in the erudite words of Ned Krause, “highly accessible to unique and ground-breaking events”.

For any countries seeking to emulate the success of Germany, here’s a long-read on how the country built an exhibition industry envied across the globe.

(You might want to find a comfy chair and pour a strong coffee for this one…)

In the years that followed the Middle Ages, Germany – as it is today – was at the epicentre of European trade and development. And as the world entered the autumn of the 19th century, it was Germany, at least in Europe, that developed and operated a model that clearly showed the impact that recurring international exhibitions could have for a market – either geographical or industrial.

The establishment of post-medieval trading communities such as the Hanseatic League (Hansa) were early prototypes for modern bodies such as the European Economic Community. The Hansa was a commercial confederation that between the 13th and 17th centuries gave rise to regular trading cycles and protection. With the north German city of Lübeck as its capital, the League enabled market towns and merchant guilds across northern Europe to share products under protected economic and diplomatic conditions.

German industry has played a major role in the development of trade fairs, especially in the last hundred years. But as early as the Middle Ages, important fairs were established at the intersections of major trade routes in cities such as Leipzig, Frankfurt/Main and Cologne. The process of industrialisation that began in the 18th century also demanded new sales and distribution channels which also affected the trade fair business.

However, it was not until the middle of the 19th century that the ‘Mustermesse’ (Samples Fair) we know today was developed; it emerged initially in Leipzig but its use quickly spread to other locations.

The composition of the shows also evolved, with goods on the fair stands no longer sold directly in a transactional currency-for-goods format. Instead, exhibitors displayed samples, and the interested parties would place orders or otherwise establish a process of supply. These samples fairs, with a wide range of investment and consumer goods, dominated the trade fair scene in Germany and Europe right through to the middle of the 20th century. The Leipzig Fair officially became known as Mustermesse in 1895.

With the establishment of the German Reich in 1871, Leipzig became the only city in the country to enjoy a reputation as a leading international trade fair centre beyond Germany’s borders. Elsewhere, from the mid-19th century to the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, world exhibitions were regarded in a way that is very different to today.

Where today these world expos rarely make headlines in the international press, they used to serve a considerable economic function and were often showcases for the initial presentation of important technical inventions and innovations. The German Reich, and to a great extent also German industry, was closely involved in these events.

At the end of the 19th century, numerous exhibitions of national significance were also organised; they were, for the most part, dedicated to a specific topic such as electricity, health or mechanical engineering, and they were aimed primarily at the general public.

The end of the Great War in 1918 ushered in a new era. While the Leipzig Fair continued to play a leading role, the Frankfurt and Cologne fairs regained their importance once again. By the end of the 1920s individual specialist fairs began to appear alongside the large public exhibitions being held in Berlin.

According to Harald Kötter, German exhibition industry expert and director of public relations and market transparency at the Association of the German Trade Fair Industry (AUMA), in the run-up to the Second World War the government in Germany continued to recognise the significance of trade shows as platforms through which to reach large audiences, and began to distort their purpose for its own gain. “Exhibitions in Germany evolved to become a form of propaganda for ‘public enlightenment’, with their core purpose shifting from that of marketing instruments to ‘demonstrations of national efficiency’,” he explains. “As might be expected, during this period the trade fair and exhibition business was firmly under the control of the Reich Propaganda Ministry.”

And with that, the world was again plunged into darkness. The aisles of the exhibition halls were no longer filled with international visitors but with munitions and the machinery of war.

The fog lifts

Developments at the end of the Second World War instigated a decisive break in the directional growth of the German trade fair and exhibition industry, which was forced to undergo a root and branch restructure as Germany divided into two sectors following events in 1949.

As part of the Eastern Bloc under Soviet occupation, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) grew increasingly detached from long-established German trading principles of openness and the facilitation of international visitors – principles that are, of course, integral to the development of any global exhibition marketplace. Despite this handicap, however, Leipzig, the only trade fair centre in the GDR, attempted to regain its international position and played a key role in East–West trade right up until the 1980s.

On the other side of the idealistic line and geographic border, in the Federal Republic of Germany, the international fairs in Frankfurt and Cologne were dusted off and kicked back into operation again in 1947 and 1948 respectively. The Berlin Exhibition Centre followed suit in 1950. These existing centres were joined by the gigantic Deutsche Messe-und Ausstellungs in Hanover, which was founded in 1947 with the British army playing an interesting role, converting a former aluminium factory in the interests of economic regeneration. Until then, small trade fair centres including Düsseldorf and Munich played a more important role. Further international trade fairs were developed at other locations, including Essen, Nuremberg, Hamburg and Stuttgart, albeit initially with only regional significance.

“The 1950s and 1960s were marked by geographical and thematic decentralisation,” comments Kötter. “Above all, this was due to the fact that numerous trade fair themes that had previously been part of the Leizpig Fair, now had to be established in West Germany. In this way numerous trade fairs for clearly-defined sectors of industry were created.”

It was to be the birth of a national collection of exhibition centres quite unlike anywhere else in the world.

For obvious reasons, in the late 1940s the Allied occupying powers and Germany’s citizens had a great interest in seeing German industry regain its former export strength as quickly as possible. The significance of these huge trade fair centres was well understood at the time. “To this end, internationally representative trade fairs in Germany were an outstanding instrument,” says Kötter. “This belief conformed to the endeavours of the German fair companies, to create an international image and correspondingly to open up their events to exhibitors and visitors from all over the world.”

And as befits an exhibition venue and organisers of such stature, Leipzig too left its monopolistic position in the East and re-entered the fold. Following the collapse of the Berlin Wall and reunification of Germany in 1990, the city sought to establish a new role for itself in the once again competition-oriented and unified German trade fair scene. In doing so its trade fair programme was split into numerous events. They might have been playing in a different field for 45 years, but East German companies were quick to recognise the importance of trade fairs in a market economy, and were well on the way to once more making intensive use of trade fairs on both sides of the now defunct divide.

This period also saw the development of a key feature of the German trade fair scene, whereby companies organising fairs staged events according to a specific sector and with international participation, all supported by the respective trade associations as conceptual sponsors or co-organisers. Today, the model remains more or less identical: a venue, a city, an audience of buying visitors and selling exhibitors that belong to a specific industry or part of an industry, and buy-in from an aspirational association or guild.

But to understand the roots of the modern exhibition further, we have to look more closely at the conditions and market forces that were already at play over a century ago. The journey from trading communities such as the Hanseatic League to modern, cultivated, economic clusters is the result of much more than the erection of a few giant buildings.

Up until the end of the 19th century, the history of trade fairs and exhibitions was characterised by considerable state influence and by the exercise of patronage and privilege. But with the broadening range of goods for sale and an increasing number of inventions appearing, the matter arose of how best to utilise exhibitions to get these innovations to market. How many commercial exhibitions could industry stand? Who should organise what, at which time and venue?

Events in Germany during these decades showed that while there was increasing engagement by private organisers of exhibitions, competition was also developing between organisers in the public sector. In fact, there was such an increase in the number of public exhibitions that the industry became thoroughly unsettled. Having once sought out such exhibitions as platforms for reaching their target audiences, the very entities these exhibitions were conceived to serve were now faced with too much choice. So great was the over-supply that they had become dissatisfied.

Under this pressure the ‘Permanent Exhibition Commission for German Industry’, the predecessor of today’s AUMA, was founded in 1907. For the continued success of the industry, this body, drawn from industry associations, undertook the task of creating order in the exhibition and trade fair business in Germany.

“What was the reason for the foundation? It had been preceded by over a century of the German exhibition and trade fair business with good and bad experiences and half a century of German participations at world expositions with similar ambivalent experiences,” says Harald Kötter. “A large number of small and extremely small public shows had arisen, and commercial exhibition organisers appeared on the scene, often with the support of the municipalities.

“Many exhibition scandals and business collapses had shaken the confidence of industry and threatened to discredit the good public exhibitions. Those in the industry lacked the possibility to rationally check the many projects and to make decisions about participation on a solid basis. Based on this recognition, the wish developed to create an organisation that in future should make successful participation possible for German industry.”

Protecting the interests of the attendees and exhibitors was one thing. But there also had to be some regulation that ensured fair competition between individual organisers of these events. The municipally supervised international fair in Leipzig, for example, had an unchallenged position as a sample fair. Hardly in keeping with an ideal in which free and fair competition is seen, after all, as a cornerstone of free enterprise.

The extension of responsibility of the Permanent Exhibition Commission for German Industry to accommodate such matters happened in 1920 as the commission evolved into the ‘Exhibition and Trade Fair Office of German Industry’. That same year the National Trade Fair Conference gathered 170 representatives of business organisations to create additional general fairs in Frankfurt/Main and Cologne. The aim was to protect the Leipzig Fair from new fairs since the main commercial supporter of this fair, particularly in financial terms, was industry.

Nothing could be said against the one-time organisation of trade fairs, provided they were supported by specific industry groups in agreement with the buyers. However, Kötter points out that the debate clearly showed that in the cities in which new fairs had developed there was no belief that trade fair policy was industrial policy and not municipal policy. “On the contrary: the trend towards decentralisation had grown and the Leipzig Fair, which was accused of monopolistic endeavours, came under fierce attack.”

A shaky start: international trade shows

Following the First World War, Germany’s trade fairs began to find competition forming abroad. The arrival of these new foreign trade fairs became part of AUMA’s area of activity, with information on the activities of these competing trade fair organisers taking on greater importance.

In 1927, in an effort to reduce the threat posed by the arrival of international events elsewhere, the leading associations of the wholesale and foreign trade, the retail trade, the skilled trades and agriculture as well as the German Association of Chambers of Commerce and Industry joined the organisation to increase its industry catchment. It adopted a new name, the ‘German Exhibition and Trade Fair Office’, and now represented the complete spectrum of the exhibiting and visiting industry.

“Up to the seizure of power by the National Socialists in 1933, the German Exhibition and Trade Fair Office also contributed to truth and clarity as well as to legal certainty in the trade fair industry with a series of publications,” explains Kötter. “For example, model regulations for the awarding of prizes to products by commercial exhibitions were published in cooperation with the National Board of Trustees for Economic Efficiency.”

Following Hitler’s seizure of power in 1933, the Advertising Council of German Industry was established and put under the authority of the Ministry of Propaganda. The following year, the Trade Fair Office was renamed the Exhibition and Trade Fair Committee of German Industry, the name by which it continues to be known today. “This committee served as a permanent advisory body to the Advertising Council and as a result, was spared absolute enforced conformity,” comments Kötter, adding that it had, however, lost its influence as an independent institution of the industry.

The strict interpretation of the National Trade Ordinance now regulated the trade fair and exhibition industry in Germany. For the protection of the Leipzig Fair, a special body under public law – the Leipzig Fair Office – was created.

It’s often said that while the circumstances are deplorable, great scientific and technical advance is made in times of war as a result of enforced necessity. While not quite as laudable as the fact that German long-range ballistic missile technology brought us more swiftly to the moon, the National Ministry for Public Information and Propaganda worked hard to ensure that the exhibition industry in Germany operated as efficiently as possible. It was not only responsible for the approval of exhibitions; Leipzig mayor Rudolf Haake demanded that “a good exhibition management will constantly have contact and links with this ministry, which is responsible for the exhibition industry”, and accordingly the industry consolidated around its founding principles of cohesion, communication and freedom of information. As it continues to do today.

Of course, in the run-up to World War Two these industry advances were mitigated by withdrawal on the international market. The endeavours to achieve self-reliance of the Third Reich reduced the involvement at foreign trade fairs, which were seen as a direct threat to German industry even though it was eager to increase its involvement at such events overseas. Imports of foreign goods and internationalism at fairs such as Leipzig were not a prime objective. Between 1933 and 1937 a great number of exhibitions were conceived purely for the ‘enlightenment’ of the people. Propaganda under duress does little to progress any industry, and before long the country’s exhibitions shut down altogether, walls soared tall as its despot leader traded only in lives and fanatic idealism.

Shell-shocked and rearing its head among the smouldering ruins of the Second World War, traditional industry in Germany was in complete disarray. There was no longer a central office to handle the exhibition and trade fair industry. At the instruction of the British occupying forces, an export fair was founded in Hanover in 1947, while Cologne and Frankfurt made preparations to recommence their activities. The foundation of an Exhibitors’ Advisory Committee and the merging of various industry associations were precursors to the re-establishment of AUMA in 1949. The purpose of the reinvigorated organisation was the representation of the “common interests of German industry in the area of the exhibition and trade fair business at home and abroad.” It began the continuous monitoring of all shows, collecting and evaluating relevant material, promoting the country’s more promising events and preventing those that could be considered superfluous, in effect promoting good practice and countering abuse. It also worked to monitor and assess legislation and jurisdictional issues to keep the German exhibition engine well oiled and free of impediment.

“With the new start, AUMA was again founded as a body representing the interests of the exhibiting and visiting sectors of industry,” comments Kötter. In 1951, just six years after the war, the large number of new trade fairs created the first problem of co-ordination. The exhibition centres in Frankfurt, Hanover and Cologne combined efforts to develop a joint trade fair nomenclature for various parts of the industry. Large trade fairs, including the trade fairs for leather goods in Offenbach and toys in Nuremberg, as well as the German Handicrafts Fair in Munich, ran joint international advertising. The tight cohesion and single-mindedness of the German exhibition industry was back.

“The basic idea stood equally above both the efforts of AUMA and of the involved trade fairs themselves,” the managing director of AUMA at that time, Döring, commented, advising against the use of lawyers to achieve the industry’s goals. “Any measure developed within the context of a process of self-refinement of the trade fair business, would be better than legal intervention, which was temporarily within the realms of possibility.”

Modern era

The Fabulous Fifties witnessed the foundation of numerous trade fairs, many of which still enjoy international importance today. Photokina in Cologne, the Book Fair in Frankfurt, the Leather Goods Fair in Offenbach, the Toy Fair in Nuremberg and DRUPA in Düsseldorf stand strong today having first thrown their doors open in 1951. On the other side of the Wall, the Leipzig Fair continued to exist, but it quickly became clear that despite initial popularity with exhibitors and visitors from West Germany, it would be unable to maintain its pole position as consumer and capital goods trade fairs began to pop up all over the country.

Ignited and roaring a decade after the end of the war, Germany’s economic growth initially meant that there was no problem accommodating the growing number of trade fairs. And where new markets were growing around the country, it seemed only natural that they would become financially involved in the construction of additional facilities. This was accepted by the exhibition industry as inefficient competition between organisers inevitably translated as inefficiencies imposed upon exhibitors and visitors. The changes in the trade fair business also affected AUMA, which became an association for the entire sector, including the trade fair organisers.

The recovery of the exhibition industry in Germany meant that the market was now primed to develop many industrial practices that have come to define the whole industry as we know it today.

Before the days of low-cost air travel and availability of cheap automobiles, there was a more compelling reason for the large public exhibitions and trade fairs that accommodated businesses in a variety of sectors. For many, the general interest exhibitions that took place in their city once or twice a year provided them with their only opportunity to find stock or suppliers for their business.

The visitors’ lack of mobility was the reason why it was necessary at the beginning of the Fifties to decentralise event themes. However, towards the end of the decade the industry saw the first signs of a trend towards concentrating on order, giving events greater appeal for target groups from more than one region.

With improved co-operation between the first major trade fair companies (Hanover, Frankfurt and Cologne) the way was paved for co-ordination between the organising and exhibiting sides, a relationship that was at this point unique to Germany. The country had to make room for visitors from all over the land to attend the fairs that could progress their businesses.

Other trade fair organisers followed suit. The founder members of the IDFA – the Association of German Trade Fair Organisers and Exhibition Venues (among them Berlin, Stuttgart, Nuremberg, Hamburg and Essen) and the newly founded FAMA (the Special Association for Trade Fairs and Exhibitions), which represented the interests of the regional and municipal trade fair companies – soon joined AUMA, along with smaller private organisers without their own venues. In the run-up to the present day, one German trade association after another, together with companies responsible for organising participation at foreign trade fairs, became members of AUMA with a mind to matching the demands of their market with the needs of their fellow members.

AUMA, together with the Central Committee of the Advertising Industry (ZAW), began to concentrate on truth and clarity in the descriptions of events, a matter that is discussed in depth elsewhere in this book. As a result of the dynamic process of change unfolding in the types of exhibition on offer in Germany, from the universal exhibition at the beginning of the Fifties to later special interest fairs, it was becoming increasingly difficult for non-government organisations, and certainly those outside of the structure provided by the key industry associations, to play a valid role.

As the Swinging Sixties reached maturity, the scene was also set for the introduction of measurements that would seek to more accurately define the perceived value of an exhibition. As Kötter points out: “All the more important was the provision of reliable and comparable trade fair data in order to provide the exhibiting and visiting industry, at an early stage, with empirical values about the events that had been conducted.” For this purpose, in 1966 six trade fair organisers founded the Society for the Voluntary Control of Trade Fair and Exhibition Statistics (FKM), which – with its uniformly collected and audited statistics – made a vital contribution to transparency in the competition between the organisers.

Today, the German exhibition industry has a leading reputation not only as being home to some of the largest and best utilised exhibition venues, but for developing these regional institutions into progressive international businesses. Messe Frankfurt’s business in the Middle East (EPOC Messe Frankfurt) stands among the leading organisers in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Its mothership in Germany produces the motoring aftermarket products event Automechanika; this is one of, if not the, world’s most travelled exhibitions, with an annual presence in 14 different locations around the world.

“The greatest asset up to the present day has been the internationalisation of the German trade fairs which began in the Fifties, in particular, through the systematic development of representative offices abroad,” says Kötter. “Although initially there was some resistance from certain groups of German exhibitors who were interested in foreign visitors, but not in competitors on the exhibiting side, in the end all the organisers together with the internationally-operating companies succeeded in opening up German trade fairs completely to foreign exhibitors.”

And of course, with the collapse of the Berlin Wall AUMA rounded off its membership with the readmission of one of Germany’s leading centres, that had been temporarily prevented – once again by misguided political idealism – from doing business freely in Germany. The Leipzig Trade Fair Company re-entered the fold after German reunification in 1990, and with that the trade fair industry in the country that started the modern exhibition industry as we know it today, was once more complete.

With increasing diversification in industry and the integration of Germany with the world economy, the number and international significance of German trade fairs has also increased. According to Kötter: “The number of international trade fairs doubled in the period 1970 to 1990 alone to a total of about 100. At the beginning of the 1990s, more than 40 per cent of exhibitors and almost 30 per cent of visitors came from outside Germany, which means that Germany was now regarded as the world’s leading trade fair country.”

But the world outside Germany has been quick to catch up.

As the delineation between types of business events becomes ever-more cloudy, the boundaries between exhibitions, conventions and conferences less clear and increasingly dependent on crossover and hybridisation, the design of the venue itself is brought into question as never before.

Giant, mostly empty, aircraft hangars suitable for little other than housing exhibition booths run the risk today of becoming defunct. Given its renowned economic growth in recent years, it will not be particularly surprising to read that China has no fewer than 120 venues capable of housing exhibition events of more than 5,000sqm. However, what you may find startling is the fact that these venues are occupied, on average, for just eight per cent of the time. That low usage is, surely, unlikely to continue.

The future of venue design most likely lies in modular, hybrid event spaces capable of hosting multiple, varied types of events. As new, more creative and previously untapped event formats are presented to the market, the homes in which they exist must accommodate them.

It’s a common trend to see this type of technology used to retro-fit some exhibition and conference centres. Venues such as the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre may be wall-bound (a term used to describe venues that require more space for their events but do not have the room to expand), but they may still increase the scope of their client base by catering for conferences and other business events.

American venue design company TVS Design , headquartered in Atlanta in the US, is one of those curious companies that you have most likely never heard of, but whose products you have probably experienced on several occasions. This architecture and design firm, responsible for Chicago’s McCormick Place and the Walter E Washington Convention Center in Washington DC, the Dubai Tower in the UAE and Beijing’s New China International Exhibition Centre among other international venues, holds significant responsibility for the international exhibition and convention landscape as it exists today.

The firm really found its feet with the Georgia World Congress in 1974 when current associate principal Robert Svedburg was six years old. “That was our first convention centre job, and one of the first modern US-style convention centres,” he says.
To return briefly to the tale of Nigeria’s Lagos exhibition centre, inadequate funding models are holding back venue development in the countries that need it most. While a dearth of good venue space creates monopolies and ratchets up prices (as in Nigeria), inevitably dissuading organisers that would otherwise hope to arrange their events in a city, a lack of multi-purpose venues also reduces the spectrum of events the organisers would consider staging.

In the case of TVS, the company has shifted its focus from solely US venue space to development in the emerging Indian and South American markets, both highly attractive and potentially lucrative for organisers capable of breaking new ground. In the case of India, many would love to enter a market with annual GDP growth rates approaching double-figures, but crucially they are held back by poor venues and infrastructure.

Retarded development has much to do with not achieving the right funding models, says Svedburg. The creeping recognition of the need for improved infrastructure may be there, but the money that puts the spades in the ground is often absent:
“India is attempting to push projects through via public-private partnerships (PPP); giving development rights for commercial development in exchange for someone building an exhibition holding.”

The same applies to Brazil, he claims, but as with India, public sector buy-in is not forthcoming. “The Central and South American market is pretty undeveloped. We’re seeing customers interested in both areas but it’s very hard to turn interest into buildings because they don’t have a funding model like we do in the United States and Europe. In both places the industry has grown up around a very basic facility model, and as a result they haven’t got a complex market in place yet.”

In the US, where TVS made its name, public funding for these projects is raised through dedicated taxes, hotel surcharge taxes, a rental car tax and an entertainment tax on restaurants. “It’s relatively easy for our municipalities to raise very large sums of money to do these things. It doesn’t come out of a general fund,” observes Svedburg.

On the private side, companies that have had success in raising the funds to build new venues are the hotel companies which use the exhibition space as a way to drive business to the hotel rooms and from value-added projects such as tours.

And then there’s the hybrid model. The Los Angeles Convention Center being mooted for development by venue development and management firm AEG would be created through a combination of two models: the NFL stadium/arena side would be funded privately by the developer, while the city would need to raise a bond for the exhibition/convention element, which AEG said it would guarantee.

“There’s a lot more interest in the PPP model as it gets harder to raise the huge sums of money needed to be able to do this,” explains Svedburg. “It’s a question of whether or not the revenue streams on the private side are really enough to justify the investment in the build.”

The majority of TVS’s projects are carried out in partnership with local design bureaus and institutes. TVS does the conceptual work while local firms handle the construction and tendering side of the project, remaining involved to pass judgement on what works and what doesn’t. “We take pride in making the buildings work, but keeping them beautiful at the same time,” Svedburg says.
For the industry to grow in emerging markets, the people responsible for funding these new projects must see that value too.

Once again there is no escaping the fact that government plays an important role in the exhibition business. Government officials are interested in the economic impact exhibitions have on the regions in which they work, the jobs they generate and how they can boost the industries served by our events.

A lot of good work has already been done in this area, and associations such as UFI hope to knit together some of that work so that it can make a compelling case for why exhibitions are important, and why, when the industry has an issue to discuss, it should be listened to.