Accommodations: European Hotel Strategies Vary

By Heidi Genoist -- Tradeshow Week, 6/13/2005

If you're planning a trip to a European tradeshow next year, you might want to book your hotel room now. If you're planning such a trip this year, it might already be too late.

Show managers and exhibitors who have never done business across the Atlantic might not realize it, but there are some key differences in the hotel system that accommodates the exhibition industry there.

First and most important, destinations typically don't have enough hotel rooms for all the people that come to town for a major trade fair — at least not within city limits.

Petra Cullman, head of guest events at Messe Duesseldorf, is quick to point out that — contrary to a common misperception — not all German shows are on the monstrous scale of her company's recent Interpack, which filled the fairgrounds at 1.7 million net square feet.

"There are many shows in our portfolio that are medium-sized and use one-third or half of the venue," Cullman explained. "I think this is important for U.S. organizers to know."

But for shows like Interpack, which brought 176,000 people to a city with just over 18,000 hotel beds, it's equally important for U.S. companies to know they must plan ahead for accommodations.

That's the advice of Debbie Baker, the Extras executive who handles U.S. accounts for many of Reed Exhibitions' largest European shows. Extras (a division of TWI Global) provides housing, registration, concierge service, special event planning and other services for U.S. companies traveling to tradeshows around the world.

Baker said she starts calling exhibitors to find out their housing needs as soon as she gets a list from show management — usually six to eight months in advance of a show.

"A lot of European shows are biennial, and we actually try to book as many rooms as we can for the next show (two years later) before leaving the current one," she said.

Nothing makes her life more difficult than an exhibitor who calls up a few weeks before a show looking for a hotel room — except, of course, a hotel that won't cooperate.

In fact, European hotel operators have less incentive than U.S. hotels to work with show organizers. For one thing, there's the problem of supply and demand. If there are twice as many tradeshow attendees as hotel rooms, then the hotels are sure to fill up when there's a show in town, so they have no reason to keep rates down for attendees. Besides, hoteliers have to make up for losses they suffer while the convention center is unoccupied.

To deal with this, Baker leverages the weight of Extras' frequent bookings. "We do shows all over the world, so we have a lot of buying power with the bigger properties," she said. "We can go to our rep and say, 'We booked X-thousand room nights with you last year, so we want a good rate.'"

Another thing that complicates the organizer-hotel relationship is that many European convention and visitor bureaus don't play the same role as American CVBs. U.S. bureaus help exhibition organizers find and hold room blocks, negotiate rates and even book special event venues, because of their motivation to put heads on beds (thus earning the hospitality taxes that fund their own programs). European bureaus and organizers tend to work more independently of each other.

Susan Fairley, marketing director for Trade Promotion Services (the show management division of emap business europe), said she normally doesn't even block hotel rooms for glee, the U.K. trade fair for the garden and leisure industry that brings about 30,000 people each September to Birmingham's Natl. Exhibition Centre, with only a half-dozen hotels nearby. She will this year, however, due to a new hosted buyer program that requires lodgings for VIP guests.

Other visitors simply will be referred either to the Birmingham Convention Bureau or Expotel, an independent reservations agent, which will find rooms for them according to price and location — sometimes an hour or more from the convention center.

But this doesn't pose a problem for glee visitors, said Adam Ash, president of White Hound Advertising, glee's North American agent. Birmingham is a big convention city, and tradeshow attendees "always find something," he said.

Besides, Ash added, their expectations are different than Americans'. In England, like elsewhere in Europe, several million people are within a couple hours' flight or train ride of every convention center and can easily make day trips.

Not that organizers are always happy with that situation.

Jean-Jaques Lottermoser, marketing and commercial director for the Palais des Festivals et des Congres in Cannes, France, pointed out that the average stay of visitors to tradeshows has dropped from four or five days before the recession to two or three days now.

"When you have 16,000 people (attending a tradeshow), you only need 8,000 rooms. Some come Monday to Wednesday; others Tuesday to Thursday," Lottermoser said. "We could improve that."

The city of only 70,000 inhabitants has 25,000 square meters (about 270,000 sq. ft.) of exhibit space, 8,500 hotel rooms and another 11,500 rooms within an hour's trip. It doesn't have trouble accommodating its shows, which pull between 10,000 and 18,000 visitors on average.

Although some shows outgrow Cannes' exhibit hall (GSM World Congress, the city's biggest trade fair, next year will move to Barcelona, Spain, where it expects to fill twice the space it had in Cannes), the city has a competitive advantage when it comes to its hotel package.

Unlike many large European tradeshow destinations, Lottermoser said, Cannes is a village. All the hotel operators know each other, and he himself acts as both a convention center manager and convention bureau director. With their unusually close relationship, the parties are able to work together to bring shows to town.

He gave the example of Cisco, which had a large meeting there this year and wants to return next year, but doesn't want its attendees to pay the 15-percent increase in rates demanded by certain hotels.

"So, we called all the hotels and said, 'We all want the business, so let's cooperate,'" explained Lottermoser. "If one isn't OK with it, we lose the business." Not wanting to be seen as a deal-breaker, local managers will put extra pressure on their international headquarters, which are responsible for setting rates.

This kind of cooperation is becoming more prevalent elsewhere in Europe too, according to John van Stolk, head of Intl. Exhibitions, Congresses & Events for Amsterdam RAI.

Using the U.S. CVB system as a model, the RAI recently formed a cooperative agreement with its surrounding hotels, called Amsterdam Convention Circle, to more efficiently book international tradeshows.

Amsterdam RAI's largest show, the Intl. Broadcast Convention, has some 40,000 total attendees clamoring for the city's 18,000 rooms.

"We tell the hotels, 'You have to control the price; otherwise we all lose the business.' That works for us, because of the buying power we have," van Stolk said.

More and more often, European convention centers are banding together with hotels and public institutions to attract and hold an international audience, he added. "They're starting to see the long-term financial interest in that."