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April 2008
Site Selection: The Attendee Factor
As education-rich shows become the norm, show organizers focus site selection decisions on educational logistics and an in-depth knowledge of their participants’ attendance habits.
By Patricia D. Sherman
When it comes to site selection for trade shows, the size of the hall may be 90 percent of the choice, but “that last 10 percent can make or break your show,” says Sharon Morabito, Group Show Director and Publisher, Penton Media (www.penton.com), New York, who plans large IT shows.
While many factors make up that last 10 percent — from airlift and hotel rates to golf courses and family appeal — and vary from show to show, two loom largest in today’s site selection decisions: educational logistics and the proximity of the core audience to the destination.
Educational Logistics
Education has become one of the top attendance drivers across all industries, says Ian Sequiera, Executive Vice President, Exhibit Surveys Inc., (www.exhibitsurveys.com), Red Bank, NJ. It boosts attendance, even though it may impinge on time spent on the floor.
“Education is the most compelling reason to get people to go across the world to a meeting,” says Morabito. Her shows, including Live Design International and Special Event, have complex education components and draw from more than 80 countries.
Combining the right amount of space for education sessions, the right amount of exhibit space and the right configuration to keep attendees moving smoothly adds complexity to the site selection process. “We’ve dropped cities because they’re not logistically convenient,” says Willie L. Benjamin II, Assistant Director Meetings and Exhibits, American Chemical Society (ACS, www.acs.org), Washington, DC. The society has meetings every six months for 13,000 attendees, and each meeting has 110 concurrent sessions. “Besides the convention center, we have sessions in three or four hotels, and we don’t provide lunch, so the hotels have to be close together, close to the convention center, and close to restaurants so attendees can walk from one session to the next within five to 10 minutes and get something to eat in less than an hour.”
The National Association of Realtors (NAR, www.realtors.org), has even bigger logistical challenges, says Christy Richards, Managing Director Planning and Development. NAR’s annual meeting draws about 25,000 attendees, requires 500,000 square feet of exhibition space, 100,000 square feet for a general session and another 200,000 square feet of meeting space in hotels. “We want a campus environment, with big box hotels near the convention center, like San Diego or Anaheim. We’re interested in how easily and quickly members can get from meeting to meeting to the trade show floor.” And that huge general session space can be a deal breaker. “Some cities have every piece except that.”
To Sharon Kendall, Vice President and General Manager, IDG World Expo (www.idgworldexpo.com), Framingham, MA, the design of the convention center in relation to attendees is critical. “I want meeting rooms near the show floor, and I want wide hallways and a central space where people can gather and hang out,” she says. “It makes the show look better and creates a buzz. So many convention centers aren’t designed with that in mind.” Even some newer centers, she says, have long, narrow hallways and meeting rooms far from the show floor. She praises the design of the Washington Convention Center for large shows and Boston’s Hynes Convention Center for medium-size shows.
Attendee Proximity
If you haven’t done so recently, evaluate the importance of the regional draw for your show. According to a report by Exhibit Surveys (see Marketwatch: Trade show attendee benchmarks, EXPO, May 2007), 30 percent of attendees came from surrounding states in 2006. Twenty-eight percent of attendees came from within 200 miles, and 62 percent came from more than 400 miles. Study how your attendance shifts based on different regional locations, and segment your show’s potential attendee database by state to determine which sites offer the highest concentration of prospects.
For some shows, regional draw is of little importance. Richards says attendance may fluctuate slightly at certain sites — more real estate agents live in Los Angeles than New Orleans, for example. But, in general, it’s not a major consideration. You may get more drive-ins who attend for a day in some locations, but in other locations people come and stay for the whole conference.
It’s just the opposite for other shows. For IDG, which organizes 750 IT events in 55 countries, “We have to make our shows local,” says Kendall. “IT attendees don’t travel much. We go to San Francisco for IT buyers and San Jose for industry event attendees. Eastern cities get European attendees. West Coast cities draw more Asians. Japanese attendees don’t go to Boston. Attendees from Denmark don’t go to San Francisco. Our shows in Atlanta get excellent attendance, but we don’t get attendees from north of Maryland. It’s even difficult to get people from New York to go to Boston.” The exception, she says, are shows geared toward higher-level executives. “They’ll travel, but then you need destination appeal and a golf course.”
Sites for some mid-size trade shows, like the ones Anne Goyer, Executive Vice President, Goyer Management, based in Sarasota, FL, plans for the coating industry are almost entirely dependant on regional attendance. “We tried moving to Orlando in 2001. It wasn’t a success, so now we play it safe and stay in the Midwest where we know we have a strong market. Our attendees are there strictly for business. They’re not interested in social activities.” Indianapolis is a favorite site because of its location in the heart of the manufacturing region and its accessibility by car. “Thirty percent of our attendees are drive-ins,” she says. “We have lots of individual day attendees. They spend half a day on the floor and half a day in the conference and then they’re gone.”
Large associations and for-profit show producers often have access in-house to huge amounts of data about their show attendees from membership profiles, magazines and Web sites. And they have in-house research departments to gather, refine and feed data to organizers. But smaller organizations can rely on CVBs, especially in top-tier cities, that have research departments and offer show organizers extensive menus of attendance-building tools. Chicago, for example, helps show organizers identify potential regional attendees and exhibitors using SIC codes. Las Vegas is rolling out a telemarketing service that will call potential attendees and update databases.
Using business market sectors (hi-tech, manufacturing, etc.) will also help analyze the potential nearby attendance by tracking the types of businesses predominant in the city region. For instance:
• The U.S. Department of Commerce (www.doc.gov) gathers information on every industry that’s generally identified and contributes to the gross domestic market. The information is available by state or metropolitan area.
• A state’s Departement of Labor or Department of Commerce can often provide detailed reports, including every taxpaying business within a certain category in that state.
• Local economic development councils and chambers of commerce for major metropolitan areas may have both a local and regional focus. They often have detailed demographic information, as well as industry forecasts for key sectors of the local economy.
Identifying how many prospective attendees are within a region, along with a thorough evaluation of a destination’s logistical pros and cons, will help narrow the options when it comes to making site selection decisions.
Patricia D. Sherman is a Dallas-based freelance writer specializing in the hospitality industry. She was Senior Editor of The Meeting Professional magazine, taught business and professional writing classes at several Midwestern universities and managed a b-to-b communications and advertising firm.
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