Med Shows Stable

Health care tradeshows experienced modest growth in 2007 with net square footage up 2 percent, number of exhibiting companies up 0.9 percent and professional attendance up 3.1 percent.

Compared with 2006, when square footage increased 0.7 percent, exhibiting companies were up 2.9 percent and attendance was up 7.8 percent, 2007 may not look like the strongest year for the sector. However, trends indicated by TSW Medical and Pharmaceutical Reports over the past four years reveal that last year was actually close to average.

While the rate of attendance growth was down in 2007 following increases in 2006 and 2005, three years ago it was the same story. Attendance in 2004 followed the same pattern: a modest decrease after two years of increases. At the same time, in 2007 the rate of growth for net square footage was up for the first time in three years.

Many medical show managers whom TSW approached for their take on the year's ups and downs cited location changes and cyclical fluctuations as key determinants – and research is on their side.

According to show managers interviewed, 2007 was all about location.

Exactly 70 percent of the shows in this report with attendance increases exceeding 15 percent took place in Chicago, San Diego, San Francisco, St. Louis, Baltimore, Atlanta or New York. All these cities are ranked at the top of the Healthcare Convention and Exhibitors Assn.'s “Top 20 Healthcare Cities Meetings List,” indicating growing shows were held in locations popular with health care show attendees.

The American Academy of Dermatology Annual Meeting increased by 28.6 percent in exhibiting companies, from 318 in 2006 to 409 in 2007, because of relocation from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., said Sara Peterson, senior manager of exhibits for the AAD.

“We sold out in San Francisco and had a waiting list, but were unable to place those companies, because we ran out of space in Moscone North and South,” she added. “We had more floor space to work with in Washington, D.C.”

At the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society Annual Conference & Exhibition, which increased in net square footage by 15.4 percent, from 321,700 to 371,300, a similar reason applied, said Elli Riley, HIMSS senior exhibits manager.

“There was more space available at the New Orleans (Ernest N. Morial) Convention Center than at the San Diego Convention Center for HIMSS to utilize and allow exhibitors to expand their booth size,” she said.

The president of the Herlitz Company, Kristofer Herlitz, said location was also responsible for the attendance increase at the Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting. The show had a 24.3-percent rise – from 21,357 attendees in 2006 to 26,543 in 2007.

“Attendance dropped considerably from the 2005 meeting in Washington, D.C., (where attendance was 28,146 when the Dalai Lama was a speaker) to the 2006 meeting that was supposed to be in New Orleans, but could not be after Katrina,” Herlitz said.

He added that a quick move to Atlanta from the slated New Orleans that year did not work well, because the city was not quite the attraction a healthy New Orleans would have been to the 20 percent of European attendees the show typically draws. The date change didn't help either – particularly among the academics who had planned to attend.

“When the show moved to San Diego in 2007... numbers bounced back,” Herlitz said.

Of course, some shows did catch the drop-in-numbers bug.

According to exhibit manager Benjamin Rabe of SmithBucklin, which manages the American Society for Healthcare Engineering Annual Conference and Technical Exhibition, a 14.6-percent decrease in attendance, from 1,613 to 1,378, occurred because of a move from Boston in 2006 to New Orleans in 2007 and show timing.

“People did not want to travel to New Orleans for three reasons," Rabe said. "July is hurricane season, July is hot in New Orleans and the show (which began the weekend following July 4) was too close to (the holiday).”

As he said, timing – especially around holidays – affects shows just as much as location.

According to Carrie Morin, exhibit manager of the American Society for Microbiology General Meeting, scheduling was behind a 15.8-percent decline in net square footage, from 56,900 to 47,900 net sq. ft., and a 14.6-percent decline in number of exhibiting companies, from 308 to 263.

“The meeting was held over a holiday weekend (Canada's Victoria Day, May 24), and there was an overall change in the meeting schedule,” she said.

The American Academy of Physician Assistants' Annual Physician Assistant Conference's 18.3-percent drop in attendance from 7,100 to 5,800 attendees was due to cyclical timing, according to Amy Phillips, the director of meetings and industry relations for the AAPA.

“If you review AAPA's figures through the years, we often experience a fluctuation in attendance,” she said.

“Projecting attendance and the popularity of a city is more of an art than a science, and we continue to learn what works for physician assistants based on a number of criteria, but we remain bullish about (this) conference,” Phillips added. “The growth of our exhibit hall has been consistent for the past several years despite a downturn in the economy, pharmaceutical merges, etc.”

The average medical show in 2007 had 103,106 net sq. ft., 269 booths, 376 exhibiting companies and 9,313 attendees.