Boston Narrows Marketing Focus to Medical Shows

Staff -- Tradeshow Week, 6/13/2005

The Massachusetts Convention Center Authority has lined up 51 medical and biotech shows through 2008 — and it's working to attract even more.

The MCCA, owner and operator of the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center and the John B. Hynes Veterans Memorial Convention Center, in May launched a medical marketing initiative program aimed at bringing more medical and biotech meetings and professionals to the city.

Instead of running broad, all-encompassing marketing programs, the authority decided to launch the campaign after independent research indicated that 52 percent of U.S. medical professionals and more than one-third of U.S. teaching physicians and biotech and pharmaceutical companies are within a two-hour plane trip of the city.

Jim Rooney, MCCA executive director, said he felt that a two-hour flight was the maximum travel time available to many medical professionals. "We think that Boston has some natural advantages given those statistics," he said. "Marketing and sales is a sophisticated game. You don't necessarily go fishing by throwing a net over the Atlantic Ocean."

This is the first year the MCCA exhibited in the Healthcare Convention & Exhibitors Assn. Annual Meeting June 4–7 at New Orleans' Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, Rooney noted, presenting a new campaign that "plays to our strength." MCCA plans to spend $60,000 during the second quarter to target additional medical shows for the BCEC and the Hynes, which offer 516,000 and 193,000 square feet of exhibit space, respectively. So far, 27 medical shows have been scheduled between 2009 and 2016 at the centers.

IDG World Expo's Bio-IT World Conference & Expo/Boston, recently held at the Hynes May 17–19, was successful because of its proximity to the city's medical and biotech market, said Elizabeth McMahon, the show's event director. With about 250 biotech firms in the area, "Boston's one of (our exhibitors') biggest markets in trying to fill their sales pipe-lines," McMahon said.

Each January, the Hynes also hosts the annual Yankee Dental Congress, expected to draw 78,000 attendees to the center over the next three years.