Mr. Gilbert

Meetings & Conventions

A Look at Current Trade Show Trends

By Robert Gilbert, President & CEO, Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association Int. (HSMAI)

Our organization is always working to meet our partners’ needs in order to help them reach their business goals. It’s important for us to be watching trade trends and making sure we’re at the forefront of our industry. With more than 20 years of success with connecting planners and suppliers at trade shows, we understand the importance of monitoring these trends and incorporating them into conferences to best meet the needs of our attending exhibitors and planners.

Our association provides hotel professionals and their partners with tools, insights and expertise through programs such as our conference and trade show series, HSMAI’s MEET, which we’ve recently rebranded to be able to provide the best possible experience for attendees. Along the way, and with our National event coming in September, we’ve taken a deeper look at current conference and expo trends.

The following includes current trade show trends we’re observing and experiencing:

• Increased pressure on exhibitors to demonstrate ROI
• Attracting attendees who are time impoverished to attend
• Greater difficulty of securing attention of attendees at expo booths
• Increasing costs of exhibiting and producing a trade show

Demonstrating ROI

For the past few years, businesses across all industries have been forced to examine their return on investment (ROI), and that is especially the case in the trade show and exposition world. Exhibitors have been pressured to ensure that they have a meaningful ROI at each and every event they attend. Without the ability to prove significant ROI, exhibitors have a difficult time seeing the value of spending their staff’s time and resources at a trade show.

With the aim of helping exhibitors make their goals a reality, trade shows across the board are offering more options to connect exhibitors with potential prospects in order to develop stronger business leads, which ultimately leads to stronger ROI. While the quantity of business cards that can be collected at any trade show is usually very significant, what’s important after the show is the quality of those contacts and the potential of doing business with those contacts. Volumes of databases are available for anyone to prospect from; the face-to-face time at a trade show is where those prospects can turn into relationships and ultimately confirmed business.

Additionally, many events are adding a virtual component that is associated with the physical event, extending the value of participating in the show for attendees. Virtual event aspects are often accessible weeks and even months after the show, offering extended educational, networking and even sponsorship opportunities. According to a study done this year by the International Association of Exhibitions and Events (IAEE), 59 percent of past virtual event organizers and 65 percent of future ones said their virtual events are affiliated with a face-to-face event. This demonstrates that face-to-face interaction cannot be replaced as a top business practice but can be supplemented by the virtual aspect.

Driving Attendance & Securing Attention

As information about suppliers and exhibitors has become more abundant from a variety of sources beyond trade shows – the Internet just being one of them – attendees have become less compelled to be physically present at trade shows, even a show with little or no charge to the attendee.

Trade show operators have had to reexamine the value provided at shows that will attract and engage attendees, such as enhanced educational sessions with speakers who are leaders in the industry. The educational sessions are tied to current industry trends, taught by experts in the field, in order to provide rich content to trade show attendees. ROI is also important to attendees who usually lack the capacity to invest their time in attending such events. Fortunately, trade shows have been evolving over time to be more experiential for the attendees.

Another challenge for trade show organizers has been adapting to attendees who are part of the back-to-back generations of X and Y (born between 1965 and 1994). This educated and independent demographic, who represent positions from mid-level managers to venue and destination marketers, are best engaged through personalized experiences, technology and detailed yet succinct learning opportunities.

In fact, the International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA), recently hosted a meeting targeted at Generations X and Y. In order to best engage these groups, ICCA allowed the delegates to schedule one-on-one appointments with its members and researchers to get personalized answers and advice for their own questions and projects, and provided relevant educational sessions on social media and presentation skills, as well as peer-to-peer networking assemblies.

Again, because of the abundant sources of information available to attendees, they have become less inclined to visit the booths on display at the shows they attend. Exhibitors have had to supplement their marketing tactics to get attendees to stop at their exhibit and qualify them at the same time, which requires another level of innovation and creativity on the part of the exhibitor.

Trade Show Costs

According to the Union of International Fairs (UFI), the global association of the exhibition industry, the economic downturn is receding in the global exhibition industry despite its lingering effects in the United States. Because we may still feel the effects for the next few years, trade show operators must look for ways to offset the rising costs of producing shows and must keep in mind that the recession may still impact the perceptions of exhibitors and attendees. Managing overall show expenses is important, but so is incorporating some costs into the exhibitor fees so the exhibitors don’t get hit with all the incidental costs associated with various venues and services.

Because many traditional show models depended heavily on the suppliers and their exhibitor fees to cover the cost of their trade shows, operators must continue to focus on providing the best possible experience and value for exhibitors to ensure they return year after year.

Despite challenges the industry is facing, trade shows are continuing to evolve to provide the best experience for both attendees and suppliers, who dictate the direction shows take. To make sure that your organization is adapting to the needs of your target audiences and providing compelling reasons to potentially conduct business at trade shows, operators need to focus on being in sync with their current and prospective exhibitors and attendees. Knowing the customer is always the golden rule.

Finally, it’s important to remember that despite all the technology available to us today, trade shows provide the unique opportunity to develop face-to-face relationships and learn about a variety of potential products and services in-person. Trade show trends will evolve over time, but it is important to remember the value of knowing your constituency and also understanding that face-to-face interaction still takes precedence over any other method of business development and can be an incredibly efficient use of time for both buyers and suppliers in today’s time-starved world.

For the last decade, Bob Gilbert has been guiding HSMAI through an exciting period of change. At the helm of what has become the definitive hospitality and travel marketing association in the world, he has made tremendous strides and enjoyed great successes as he’s worked to establish HSMAI as the industry champion in identifying and communicating trends in the hospitality industry. Prior to joining HSMAI in 1995 (in an executive capacity), Mr. Gilbert was the vice president of marketing for Richfield Hospitality Services, Inc., at the time, the largest hotel management company in the world. Mr. Gilbert can be contacted at 703-506-3280 or bgilbert@hsmai.org Extended Bio...

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