Tradeshow Tales   

I’ve never been to a show at which every single person, attendee and exhibitor alike, was pleased with everything. But that was the case at New Hope Natural Media’s Natural Products Expo West/Supply Expo, held March 12-14 at the Anaheim Convention Center.

I went to the show on its first day, and by the time I arrived at 10 a.m., right when the doors were opened, there was not one single parking spot anywhere near the ACC.

Inside the show, the aisles were packed with people, and usually on a show’s first day, it’s hard to really gauge whether a show is going well or not. I started interviewing exhibitors, though, and every one of them was surprised by the number of attendees crowding their booths.

Attendee...Read More

In a Jan. 25 small-business oriented blog written for the online edition of The New York Times that was entitled “Are Trade Shows a Waste of Time?” a guest blogger, Jay Goltz, wrote about his experiences at a few recent picture framing tradeshows.

Goltz had just returned from a show in Italy and had been to one in Las Vegas the month before. Even though these shows and others he also had attended had seen declines in attendance, Goltz wrote that the mood on the Vegas showfloor, as an example, was anything but somber.

“Hope seemed to have been replaced by confidence and fear by a plan,” he added. “People were enthusiastic. Suppliers were relieved.”

According to Goltz, two positive things were driving the framin...Read More

My colleague, Senior Assistant Editor Stephanie Corbin, and I recently went to a luncheon hosted by the Chicago Convention & Tourism Bureau at a hotel in Los Angeles at which Mark Theis, the bureau’s executive vice president, touted everything positive happening in the Windy City right now.

I spoke to Theis at a reception held beforehand, and he said the L.A. stop on the CCTB roadshow was the first of six cities in the next few weeks.

The purpose of the roadshow? Everyone who’s following the news going on in Chicago right now knows the ci...Read More

I have written several stories in the past year about the struggles convention and visitors bureaus have had to endure with visitor attendance dropping in most locales, resulting in falling bed-tax funds.

In turn, a lot of bureaus have had to cut staff, institute furlough days, cut salaries and bonuses and slash marketing and advertising budgets.

It’s a Catch-22 situation, though, when a city’s bureau is tasked with promoting the destination, and their funds to do so are diminished.

Money has been so tight that a lot of cities have had to not only cut back on their travel to industry meetings where face time with tradeshow and meeting planners is crucial, but also, in a time when they should be more aggressive than ever, they’ve ...Read More

No one likes to see a city lose big tradeshows with their enormous economic impacts and badly needed jobs for thousands of people (except maybe the cities that the shows wind up in), but that’s exactly what’s been happening in Chicago.

Two high-profile tradeshows already have left the Windy City citing high labor costs, and it’s rumored that two more – the Intl. Home & Housewares Show and the Natl. Restaurant Assn. Restaurant, Hotel-Motel Show – have yet to sign on past next year’s shows.

With all of this hanging in the balance, the Metropolitan Pier & Exposition Authority, which oversees McCormick Place and Navy Pier, d...Read More

I recently went to Atlanta for the Intl. Assn. of Exhibitions and Events’ Expo! Expo!,held Dec. 8-10.

While there, one of the many gatherings I attended was a “Gone With the Wind” movie tribute party hosted by the Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau at the beautiful Fox Theater in downtown Atlanta.

My co-workers and I took a shuttle bus over to the party, had a great time eating, drinking and networking, and then headed back to the hotel, where even more parties were taking place.

About a half hour later, I noticed that my wallet was gone. Beyond my I.D. being in it, I also was heading off to a week’s vacation in New York City the next day and all of my credit cards now were missing.

In just four short days, the staff here at Tradeshow Week will be heading to Houston to take part in the seventh annual TSW Fastest 50 celebration.

This will be the fourth year I’ve gone to the event, with past events I attended being held in Baltimore, Atlanta and Boston, all cities I previously had visited.

On the other hand, I have never set foot outside of the H...Read More

Last week, I flew into Las Vegas for a three-day business trip on a Sunday afternoon, and I thought the airport would be dead at that time of day, especially with all the dire news surrounding how bad things were in the city.

My ride was a little late picking me up so I stood down in the baggage claim and watched planeload after planeload come down the escalators and pick up their baggage. It seemed endless. Where were all these people coming from? They weren’t weekenders, seeing as it already was Sunday, and the biggest convention in town, the Natl. Assn. of Convenience Stores, wasn’t starting for two more days.

Once I got onto the Strip, the streets were packed with...Read More

As many cities have found out, there’s often a huge gap of understanding when it comes to the value of investing public funds in a convention center.

Most convention centers run at a loss, but the trade-off is the millions of dollars in economic impact brought in by meetings and tradeshows that would have skipped town altogether without the proper venue.

It takes a lot of convincing before most centers eventually get built, so imagine trying to explain to the public, who likely wasn’t happy to fund the center anyway, that now they also need to pony up some cash for a hotel next to it.

As Jeff Blosser, direct...Read More

Last week, I spent two days at the “Happiest Place on Earth,” otherwise known as Disneyland. I also visited Disney’s inaugural D23 Expo, held Sept. 10-13 at the Anaheim Convention Center.

Before I was surrounded by the world of Disney for those two days, I thought I had pretty limited exposure to what the company was all about.

Little did I know that it was part of my life in many ways, and I’m not just talking about Sunday nights in my youth watching “The Wonderful World of Disney.”

During the opening presentation packed with Disney fans, flashed on the screen were all the logos of the companies owned by Disney, including ABC-TV and ESPN, all of the theme parks, radio and TV stations, feature ...Read More

Believe it or not, even though there are die-hard Disney fans the world over, the company that seems omnipresent in other aspects has never had its own fan club.

In an effort to reach out to the tried-and-true who love all things Disney, the company is launching the D23 Expo Sept. 10-13 at the Anaheim Convention Center.

The expo is named for the year Walt Disney moved to Hollywood, 1923, and is open to the public.

I will be there with a group of journalists and, besides visiting the expo, Disney executives who invited us are making sure we see as much as possible about what the company has to offer across not only its entertainment brands, but also theme parks, hotels and cruises.

The day will...Read More