This Crazy Little Thing Called ... ?
Michael Hughes -- Tradeshow Week, 8/15/2005
There are many names for this industry. The most common are tradeshow and convention. Exhibition and exposition are also used a lot. But the definitions of tradeshow, convention, exhibition and exposition all pretty much amount to the same thing.
Many people use show to describe an event with exhibits, but some use the same term when they're referring to what others call a conference.
Trade event is another one that's frequently used. Around the world, but especially in Europe, trade fair is common.
On the educational side of the industry, there's also symposium, summit and forum — which all mean the same thing: conference. These types of events are also often placed under the meetings banner.
Under that banner are corporate gatherings, often called corporate events or private events. Some of these have exhibits too, and thus are called corporate tradeshows or private tradeshows. Large corporate events are also called conventions, especially by the mainstream press.
To add to the complexity, there are markets, marts and weeks used to describe events held by merchandise marts and/or tradeshows and conventions that last longer than usual or incorporate a number of collocated events.
Even the consumer show industry has a couple of names: consumer show and public show. There's a term that Tradeshow Week uses to describe tradeshows that have some consumer days, or consumer shows with a trade-only component: hybrids.
I've been researching and covering this industry for 10 years. In that time, I've changed the terms I've used to describe it more than once. When I started in the mid-1990s, I used tradeshow almost exclusively. Then I moved to exposition. Then the Intl. Assn. for Exhibition Management changed the E in its name from exposition to exhibition. So I started calling them exhibitions too.
In the late 1990s, when information technology events were booming, I started to call this an events industry. Then I went back to tradeshow for a while. For a time, I felt that I was not focusing enough on the influence of associations on this industry (which own about 60 percent of all North American conventions, tradeshows, exhibitions, expositions, symposiums, etc.), and started to use convention and tradeshow industry. I've also mixed things up a little by calling it a tradeshow and convention industry.
But wait, there's more.
In the early 2000s, I started to use convention and exhibition industry, and even stuck with it for a year or two.
Recently, I've gone back to plain old event. Today I trade off, using tradeshow and events industry, and convention and events industry. I've even called it a tradeshow, convention and events industry.
For the past five to 10 years, IT event producers and exhibitors have called what they do events, and I expect that to continue. Some of them (and even some people outside the IT industry) scorn tradeshows and conventions as way too Old Media. To them, it conjures up the bad old days when tradeshows and conventions were more junket than productive work and networking experience.
I've joked it's a bad sign when experienced industry analysts are confused about what to call the industry they cover. There's an understandable sense that this (insert name here) industry needs to streamline what it calls itself to better market to clients, attendees and partners outside the industry. Some are trying to do this.
For example, the Intl. Assn. of Convention & Visitor Bureaus just changed its name to the Destination Marketing Assn. Intl. A few years ago, the Convention Liaison Council became the Convention Industry Council. The Trade Show Exhibitors Assn. was once the Intl. Exhibitors Assn. The Center for Exhibition Industry Research used to be the Trade Show Bureau.
To be fair, every industry has its share of jargon, buzzwords and technical terms. Yet this is one that clearly disagrees on what to call itself. The umbrella organization, the Convention Industry Council, consists of more than 30 organizations, most of which have very different missions, interests and terminology.
Yet this diversity is a strength; it helps make this a dynamic industry. That diversity and the confusing terminology are more positive than negative. It is an example of the industry's flexibility, demonstrated lately as attendees lead a solid recovery in most every sector of the business events industry.
Remember all the national press coverage about how conventions, tradeshows, conferences, events, etc. were being made obsolete by technology, and how travel and safety issues were hurting attendance? Some of the negative press has shifted to convention center development issues, but the events-are-dead story is pretty much dead itself.
Gatherings are essential to human interaction, and there's such a wide range and so many levels of interactions that there will always be many ways to describe them.
For large-scale, organized events, a little confusion over definitions is OK. In fact, it's probably a good thing.
In a way this diversity — and confusion — suggests that this isn't actually an industry at all. What we've been calling the (insert name here) business is really a loose confederation of related business interests. Events are a medium, not an industry.
| Event Type | Percentage of Respondents |
| Sales meetings | 67 |
| Training programs | 44 |
| Conferences | 35 |
| Private events | 34 |
| Road shows | 31 |
| Employee programs | 26 |
| Community events | 23 |
| Client events | 22 |
| Corporate sponsorship | 21 |
| New product programs | 20 |
| Source: Tradeshow Week research | |
| Author Information |
| Michael Hughes is associate publisher and director of research services at Tradeshow Week. He can be reached at mhughes@reedbusiness.com. |
