Today’s Trade Shows

TRADE SHOWS:

By: David Spain, THEPartnership

March 21 2016

I’m looking forward to departing for IMEX 2016 in Frankfurt soon, with a three day stop in the beautiful city of Lisbon first. We’re very fortunate to have the support of (and I’ll be traveling with) a fabulous group of eleven hosted buyers, all of whom will join us in Lisbon for the three days and then we’ll all travel together to Frankfurt, to arrive on the Monday evening before IMEX starts the next morning. 

How our industry’s trade shows have changed and dramatically improved over the last 25-years! I’ve never been a “buyer”, always a “supplier”, so my views on trade shows may be one-sided, but from my perspective there’s a world of difference now with shows like IMEX and IMEX Frankfurt compared to my first experiences of our industry’s trade shows – at what was then the world’s biggest meetings, events and incentive travel show, known as IT+ME, and held annually in Chicago at McCormick Place. My first time at the show was back in 1982, fresh out from London as the British Tourist Authority’s business-travel man in New York, and I was impressed, not least because it was big. But in hindsight, and with today’s IMEX and IMEX America to compare it with, there’s no comparison. Maybe for the big hotel groups and cruise ship companies it was cost-effective, but over the ensuing years it was really just a place where you went to rub noses with people you already knew, reacquaint yourself with old friends. You didn’t meet many, if any, new customers and little real business was done. I always remember the primary motivating factor for many suppliers was an inherent fear that if you weren’t seen there you’d either be assumed out of business, or worse, dead!

 And then at the end of the ‘80’s along came a man with an incredible vision and created the first (to my knowledge) appointment-based trade show embracing initially hundreds and now thousands of qualified, hosted buyers. Ray Bloom, based in the south of England, created EIBTM and (against my wishes because I was still at the BTA and was keen to have it in London) located it in Geneva. Enough said, for EIBTM in Geneva was a huge success from its very first day, and the rest as they say, is history.

 Ray Bloom’s IMEX and IMEX America are now, in my estimation, the benchmark by which to judge all trade shows. The innovation and technology improves year on year so to me it seems they’re always ahead of the curve. It works and I honestly don’t ever recall hearing a complaint about anything. To be at the show entrance to either IMEX or IMEX America in the 15-minutes before they open on the first day, when literally thousands of industry colleagues from across the globe eagerly squeeze through the doors and onto the show floor is a sight to behold. If ever there was proof needed that “buzz” can on occasion be more than a cliché then there’s the proof.

 The majority of those low-value events that fail to embrace appointments and where the door prize or the raffle to attract the buyer is the primary motivator have now largely gone the way of the dinosaur and hooray for that!  

So, first, roll on IMEX, let’s do business! And second, a sincere thank you to our fabulous group of buyers for their support and their trust in us for IMEX 2016.