No More Tickets to Paradise

In recent weeks, we editors at Tradeshow Week have joined the staffs of any number of business-to-business publications attempting to give their readers some assessment of the impact on their industry of the ongoing economic slowdown-slash-recession-slash-momentary blip-slash-credit meltdown.

It is much easier for the casual reader of mainstream publications or viewer of cable TV news to jump to conclusions: If you don't delve too deeply into the details, you have the luxury of allowing the headlines to scare you to death.

But the readers of TSW, like those of other B-to-Bs, dig deeper in search of information that will help them with their businesses. Unfortunately for them, our stories have been full of phrases that are some version of "On the one hand ..., on the other ..."

Yes, there are tradeshow sectors that have experienced declines, but there are others that are seeing double-digit growth. Companies are restructuring and laying people off, but others are doing better than ever. Some industry organizations are having membership retention challenges, but others are reporting record numbers of new members signing on.

Our readers may have become spoiled over the last few years by what was in many ways a relentless stream of good news. Having survived the darkest days of 2002 and 2003, almost every week of '04, '05 and '06 they could enjoy picking up TSW to read about this deal of unimagined value being completed or that city fighting for the opportunity to land a medium-sized tradeshow 10 or 12 years out.

So now that we have gotten to 2008, and there is the occasional discouraging word being uttered — accompanied by the panic-inducing headlines the mainstream media is carrying about the economy — it is possible to feel a bit uneasy.

Nevertheless, things are different this time around. Even at the lowest point of an economic cycle, there seems to be a place for face-to-face marketing. CEOs may decide they have to cut their marketing and advertising budgets to the bone, but they know the one place they can be sure of getting a chance to talk to their customers will be at their industry's annual meeting, so they keep going.

What made the downturn at the beginning of this decade so uncharacteristically harsh for the tradeshow industry was the generalized reluctance on the part of the public to travel after Sept. 11. That caused the cancellation of shows across the board, which led to all sorts of other problems.

Since then, the public has lost its fear of getting on a plane. That doesn't mean, as an industry, we are safe from peril when it comes to the airlines though.

In the last two months, three airlines have gone out of business. Southwest, United and American canceled thousands of flights because of Federal Aviation Administration-mandated safety concerns. Delta and Northwest announced a merger just days before they had to reveal that, between the two of them, they lost $465 million and wrote off $10 billion of goodwill in the first quarter, making it clear that consolidation in the airline industry might not turn out well for investors or travelers.

Going forward into the summer, it doesn't look much better. Record fuel prices and a weak dollar mean more flights will be canceled, those that are left will be both crowded and delayed, and tickets for them will cost more.

Even if you're inured to traveling for business, you still ask yourself each time, "Is this trip really necessary?" Your exhibitors and attendees, who may only get to one or two shows a year, ask themselves the same thing, and probably say "no" more often than you do.

If there is one more unexpected shoe to drop, this might be it. And if there is one issue of concern this year that the tradeshow industry should coalesce around, this is it.