IAEM: Brookings Study's Findings Unsound
Staff -- Tradeshow Week, 3/21/2005
Two months after taking a stand against a January Brookings Institution report dealing with convention center expansion, the Intl. Assn. for Exhibition Management has issued a white paper commenting on the report's "fatally flawed" conclusions. In the paper, IAEM President Steven Hacker stated: "The value of the report can be summarized in a nine-word, self-evident sentence: 'Cities should be careful when evaluating convention center projects.'"
IAEM recently placed the white paper, titled "The Rhetoric Versus the Facts: What the Brookings Report Fails to Reveal," on its Web site in response to the Brookings study, "Space Available: The Realities of Convention Centers as Economic Development Strategy."
The Brookings study, written by Heywood Sanders, a public policy professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio, criticized convention center construction and expansion, stating that it is unnecessary since many centers aren't able to attract enough shows to fill their rosters.
"The overall convention marketplace is declining in a manner that suggests that a recovery or turnaround is unlikely to yield much increased business for any given community, contrary to repeated industry projections," Sanders stated in the Brookings report.
IAEM disagrees. In the report, Hacker states there is a rising demand for meeting and exhibition space, even as the pace of expansion has substantially diminished since 2000. Additionally, the IAEM report outlines, the demand for face-to-face events continues to grow and is expected to become more robust in the future.
However, IAEM agrees with the Brookings study on two fronts: that cities must take appropriate measures to analyze the likely impact of their convention center projects and that venues cannot carry the complete burden of downtown revitalization.
