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.
Leave a Reply