Supattanapong Punmeechaow, deputy prime minister and minister of energy, The Kingdom of Thailand, says:
Smart City Expo World Congress (SCEWC), the leading international event on cities and smart urban solutions organized by Fira de Barcelona presented in Tel Aviv (Israel) an outline of its next edition to local companies and institutions.
The European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) has recently signed collaboration agreements with EMECA, the European Major Exhibition Centres Association and UFI, the Global Association of the Exhibition Industry.
The Meetings, Incentives, Conventions and Exhibitions (MICE) industry in Singapore is expected to recover strongly, following the city’s reopening to fully-vaccinated visitors with no quarantine and testing requirements.
Global Exhibitions Day 2022 takes place tomorrow, 1 June and recognises the important role that trade exhibitions play in driving economies throughout the world.
With just two weeks until IMEX in Frankfurt, over 2,800 buyers from across the world – spanning agencies, corporates, independents and associations – are busy building their show schedules and making appointments to meet and do business with an international roster of suppliers for the first time in three years.
The International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA) has chosen Bangkok as the host city of its annual general meeting next year. The 62nd ICCA Congress will be held from November 12-15, 2023.
The 2022 UFI European Conference took place over the course of three days, putting the spotlight on important industry topics and challenges faced by exhibition and event industry professionals.
The UFI board of directors has today elected Geoff Dickinson as UFI president for the 2023-24 period.
Christian Mutschlechner, the former CEO of the Vienna Convention Bureau and ICCA President, has joined the board of jwc in Germany as of March 1st, 2022.
UFI, the global association of the exhibition industry, has named the winners of this year’s UFI Next Generation Leadership Grant (NGL), following expert deliberation by a jury of exhibitions industry leaders.
Forty-three MICE entrepreneurs from 15 markets, who visited Thailand as part of Thailand Convention & Exhibition Bureau (TCEB)’s first familiarisation trip after a two-year pause, expressed their confidence in Thailand and the seven-day trip produced 57 leads with a business value estimated at 1,900 million baht.
Abu Dhabi National Exhibitions Company (ADNEC) has announced that 40% of construction work for the biggest exhibition hall in the Middle East and North Africa has been completed.
A temporary emergency shelter for war refugees from Ukraine is being set up at the Nuremberg Exhibition Center.
Organised by the German trade show company fairtrade, the 7th edition takes place from 22 to 24 March 2022 at the Landmark Centre in Lagos.
Thailand is chosen to host the International Horticultural Expo 2026 in Udon Thani, a northeastern province. It will be the first landmark global event in the Greater Mekong Subregion.
UFI, the global association of the exhibition industry, has released the latest edition of its flagship Global Barometer research, which takes the pulse of the industry.
Numbers released by the IMEX Group reflect the strong demand for the global community to get back to business, with a truly international spread of participants confirmed for IMEX in Frankfurt, taking place 31 May – 2 June.
UFI, the global association of the exhibition industry, has today announced an adapted format for its Asia-Pacific Conference 2022.
The revamped Queen Sirikit National Convention Center includes a new retail mall “BALM” developed under the concept of ‘Bangkok’s Active Lifestyle Mall’ to attract and serve health and fitness enthusiasts, urban workers and families with a variety of over 100 leading retail brands, restaurants and amenities.
16.06.2022
Ton Otten, director international at Jaarbeurs in Utrecht, sent us the following article with a few thoughts on the future of the exhibition business.
Today’s customers are very clear about their
needs: more marketing channels, more convenience, more relevance and a more
personalized experience. They want the right mix of in-person interactions,
remote contact and e-commerce self-service across the purchasing journey. To
meet these expectations we need to digitize all our processes and add new online
offerings to our customers. Offering services via "software as a service" (saas) is
the stepping stone to position the exhibition industry as a need-to-have in the
marketing mix of our customers.
“The future of B2B sales is hybrid! Since B2B buyers are using more channels, B2B sellers must, too” {McKinsey April 2022 [1]. Hybrid utilizes a combination of channels, including in-person, remote and e-commerce, to serve customers where and when they prefer. The shift toward more digital marketing & sales with a personal, or individual, touch was already quite prevalent, during the pre-pandemic period as a McKinsey’s research reflected in 2018.
“B2B customers not only intend to continue engaging remotely, as two-thirds prefer it to in-person interactions at many purchasing stages” {McKinsey April 2022}. In-person engagement doesn’t go away, but it is reserved for specific accounts and moments that matter, such as customers with complex needs, or for important opportunities, like buying a new product or solution. “Forty percent of B2B customers using a new supplier prefer to buy only if they’ve met the sales rep in person” {McKinsey April 2022).
The McKinsey research sounds pleasant for the producers of live-events and venue operators, who are facing a post-pandemic slow-start with an overall 60-70% occupancy level compared with the pre-pandemic figures. The supply-problems, China’s zero Covid strategy, the Ukraine war, the inflation, labor shortages etc. are some of the arguments used to explain the actual gap. And it must be said that is partly true. But there is more to explain like the ongoing disruption of our business and the lack of digital services.
The market share of providers of digital marketing & sales services across the customer journey, including remote and e-commerce providers, keeps on growing. But most of the leading shows weren’t affected as a result of the increasing global trade. Exhibitions continued their growth with exhibitors from the China/Asia region. There was no reason to invest heavily in digital technology to add value to the customer journey’s touchpoints. Similar to the car industry the upgrade of our products was enough to safeguard the income and high margins.
The pandemic has forced nearly every serious company to produce virtual event platforms. This experience has made business more receptive to its potential advantages like new audiences and new suppliers through that digital experience. The in-person experience is still seen as primary but it’s questionable if we will return to the pre-pandemic figures.
McKinsey researched that in-person meetings will continue but B2B suppliers and customers are going to be more selective. The value of offerings are increasing by customizing, individualizing and personalizing our services. So we need to integrate the in-person experience and virtual engagement features.
Buyers decide to attend a trade show principally to
find out the latest trends, identify industry innovations, and seek new ideas
(Diego Rinallo, 2017). Buyers want to develop relationships, share ideas, and
experiment with products (Diego Rinallo, 2006). If you want to respond to this
need an individual and more personalized approach is a necessity.
The pandemic period has proved that the personal
contact and a remote meeting are not interchangeable. Customers expect that we
demonstrate we know them on a more personal level when we communicate with
them. This forces us to organize our processes in a way that the timing of
communication, the offers and the content are relevant.
“To create the right analytics and insights along the entire customer journey, we need to be able to integrate consistent data into our data lake and blend it with data from other marketing and communication channels” {Stephen Rose, head of global communication services, Siemens}.
It’s not anymore questionable if there is a need for a personalized approach but there is a huge demand for it. Fortune 500 companies like Siemens are far ahead and their marketing and sales systems are ready for tailored messaging to the customers’ needs, offering relevant targeted promotion, sending timely communication tied to key moments, sending trigger based offers on the customers behavior, engaging and onboarding first time customers, show-up to their target group in the frequently visited websites/apps, celebrate customers milestones, etc.
We need to deliver at least the same opportunities to our key-target group and these are the Small and Medium Enterprises who are responsible for most of our revenue. We need to turn our collective marketing events into a personalized marketing journey, bottom-up instead of top-down!
From the perspective of our customers the exhibition was always one of many marketing instruments they used. But they were the passengers in our bus who picked people up once a year for a 2-5 day journey! Customers expect that we “Uberize”, and give them the opportunity to “rent a car” to ride their own journey. Of course they are welcome to use our common facility, the exhibition. But it isn’t necessary, many will do and many others won’t!
Our clients will be able to monitor and optimize
the customer journey of their own events. The exhibitions we offer are maybe
one out of many events they do each year. For all of this SME customers need professional
tools. We are able to offer these tools without being our own disrupter. It’s the opposite as we are “accelerating
trade” and by doing this staying
[1] The future of B2B sales is hybrid by Lisa Donchak, Julia McClatchy, and Jennifer Stanley. McKinsey April 2022.
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