Last October, bicycle trade show Interbike learned a valuable lesson—moving a venue to a new city can elicit a fiery backlash from exhibitors and attendees. The choice to change locations is one of the most important decisions an event planner may ever make in their career and while key stats like size, date availability and pricing play an integral role in the decision, there are also a variety of other priorities that need to be considered.

Location, Location, Location

“The first question is always what’s the magnetic appeal of the destination itself?” says CB Wismar, vice president of AARP Events, which produces the annual AARP Life@50+ event. “That doesn’t even take into consideration the hall or the convention center. Once you find out if a city appeals to your folks, then you can go in and see within that city what venues make the most sense.”

Identifying a city that is viable for your attendee base is the first step in shopping your next convention center.

“We essentially heat map our registrations from the past five years to see where we’re drawing from and where folks are willing to travel from to get to our event,” says Wismar.

AARP’s event hosts about 300 exhibitors to display in an estimated 350,000 net square feet of exhibit space. In total, around 25,000 attendees come out. The AARP event tries to alternate its yearly show between the east coast and the west coast. In the future, it may also expand to have several regional events.

“Before we even decide we want to have an event we consult our centralized database that looks at and pulls from all of our different subscribers and visitors that interact with our brands in the non-event spaces of digital and print products,” says Matt McGowan, the North American managing director at Incisive Media, which produces over 400 global conferences and expos a year. “When we look at the themes and patterns we notice key demographics. We might see that we have a large percentage of people in the Chicago area—we don’t throw an event in a city because we want to, we look at our data and we let the data tell us where we should hold an event.”

McGowan’s group produces Search Engine Strategist [SES] Conference and Expos in Hong Kong, Amsterdam, Berlin, Chicago, London, Singapore, San Diego and New York, among other places. There are about 100 exhibiting companies at each show and while attendance varies city to city, the shows usually draw a few thousand to each event.

“We’ve recently been in Seattle, Pittsburgh, Birmingham, Fort Lauderdale and Phoenix,” says Aubrey Wanner, meeting manager for the National Society for Histotechnology [NSH], which puts on an annual symposium and conference. The NSH’s national event, which draws around 1,200 attendees, held its most recent event in Cincinnati, Ohio in September 2011.

“We have a philosophy that we take education to our members so we don’t have a standard location, that’s why we go all over the country,” says Wanner.

While the group doesn’t have a search committee to identify cities, Wanner personally visits the possible locations to evaluate how it may fit for the show.

“We try to bounce east to west so I will target an area of the country and then I’ll start zeroing in on the cities within the area that we have an interest in and we’ll send out RFPs,” she says. “Once we whittle those down, we’ll cite three cities, and I’ll travel to each to see which ones I like and I’ll make a recommendation to the executive director and the board and they will make the final decision.”

Wanner says that exhibitors and attendees have responded positively to the decision to come to Cincinnati, but adds, “We’ve got a positive response and everyone’s happy but the numbers were a little lower,” she says. “We had a tiny dip and I do attribute that—as I review our history and pattern—to some of the two and three tier cities we’re going to because I just don’t think they sell themselves. I think people are wonderfully surprised and happy when they get here but we definitely have shifted into cities that sell themselves a little bit better so we’re trying to target tier one cities.”

Window Shopping (for Venues)

After analyzing an event’s demographics and identifying a city that will suit a show’s constituents, narrowing down and shopping for a convention center or venue is the next important step show organizers must undergo.

“We are pretty breakout intensive so we need to have a significant number of breakout rooms to go with our exhibit hall. We have the trade show going but we also have tons of education running,” says Wanner.
Identifying the wrong venue can present a variety of issues and the layout of a convention center is necessary for a successful event. While Wanner’s event needs to have ample space for breakout rooms, a consumer-type event like AARP’s Life@50+ has different criteria for selecting a venue for its event.

“Once you determine the magnetic appeal of the destination itself you say, ‘Ok, what are the venues that make the most sense for us?’” says Wismar. “We’ve got a bit of a different show in the sense that we are a 50-plus organization, our median age is 63 and we’re not talking about people that cannot get around, but when you look at a convention center you have to see how it’s laid out.”

Wismar says that AARP chooses venues that have a purposeful build and are designed for ease of access and ease of movement.

“It boils down to micro factors, we need something close to the city or in the city so people can walk to the event,” says McGowan. “Or we need to determine if we’re going to have to bus people in from a distance if the event is in the outskirt of the city. If you’re in New York, doing something in Brooklyn is a lot cheaper. “
Some of the micro factors that play a role in venue selection for SES include the time of year because the event doesn’t want something too close to a holiday, which could disrupt attendance.

“Once you determine there is a fiscal facility we need to determine the access points, the way in which people move, look at the elevators and escalators, width of the halls and see if the exhibit halls are compatible with the number of people you have and the design of your show. Then you start looking at other items that are available,” says Wismar.

In August, the Society of Critical Care Medicine decided to move its event from Los Angeles to San Francisco because of construction worries. The ability to move people easily, the show planners said, was one reason for the change. McGowan agrees that events don’t work if they’re not convenient, and that there will be massive drop-offs if easy access is not available.

“You’d be surprised, but many venues aren’t designed with events in mind,” says McGowan. “You can find session rooms that are a good 10 minute walk from the exhibition hall, which tends to end in disaster because people don’t go back and forth enough. The flow of the space is so critical.”

Size compatibility is also important, a facet McGowan has learned from experience.

“Certain venues are made for events in the 20,000-plus demographic and certain venues are made for events that have 2,000 to 5,000 people,” he says. “In the past we’ve made mistakes, and I think most companies probably have, we’ve tried to rent very large venues and size it down for a smaller event but the new train of thought is start small and over-sell or sell out to make that good impression and then maybe move to a larger space if needed.”

Hotel space for attendees and exhibitors also has a heavy emphasis for show organizers. The distance a person has to travel to your event once they’ve come to a city plays an integral role in their overall experience.

“When I get onsite I look at the hotel package because that has a huge impact,” says Wanner. “I’ve been to some great centers but the hotel package wasn’t very tight.”

Last summer, the World Car Care Expo decided to move its event away from McCormick Place in Chicago because of uncertainty around organized labor relations. McGowan says this can also be a factor when selecting a venue.

“We look to see if it’s a union town or not,” he says. “There are serious costs associated when you get unions involved versus cities where you don’t have them involved. Costs can come down quite a bit, especially around the exhibition side and the audiovisual side of the cost structure.”

Venue Accommodation

Having a venue that is close to a hotel or one that gives ease of access is important, but so are other accommodations that are event specific—things that could make or break a venue selection for a particular show. Consulting with a facility is key to making sure an event is a success.

“We let participants actually practice what they’re learning to enhance their techniques and with that comes a requirement for [the venue to have] access to local hospitals and facilities to get rid of waste or to bring in some of those materials,” says Wanner.

Having accommodations that are in synch with the identity of the organization is also important.

“We ask about the food facilities. I’m talking less about the catering capabilities and the banquet capabilities but more about the food stands,” says Wismar. “What do the facilities support? Is it all greasy fat—hot dogs, hamburgers and French fries and maybe a taco stand or are there salads, places to get fruit and food that are more in keeping with the way in which we are trying to get the entire country to eat? We try to move toward healthier menu items and we want people to feel like they have some choices. Food is a big thing with our attendees.”

Wismar also looks to see what the level of service is within all the venue’s facilities. He says AARP will step away from a convention center if the staff, “frankly doesn’t care. If it will add to the work time and frustration of the full-time staff that’s producing the event we will shy away from that place because this is not an easy business and we don’t want to make it harder.”