Still fired up after the Heywood Sanders sideshow, I thought I would do a bit more research. Here’s just some of what I found thanks to Tradeshow Week and author Stephanie Corbin:
Indianapolis: Wooing Business Back
For many venues that cater to the tradeshow business, the choices are simple: grow or lose shows.
That was the case for the Indiana Convention Center & RCA Dome. During the past few years, the Indianapolis Convention & Visitors Assn. has declined the opportunity to bid on 150 events because it didn't have enough convention space or hotel rooms to accommodate them, according to Chris Gahl, the ICVA's spokesman. Because of the lack of space, the Performance Racing Industry Tradeshow, staged in Indianapolis for seven years, left for Orlando in 2005.
Healthcare shows:
Health care tradeshows and meetings have become such plums for convention and visitors bureaus to land that some cities – Cleveland, for one – are using them as part of their pitch when they go to the public to sell voters on paying for convention center construction or expansion.
But even with so many cities calling, “Here, please!” health care show managers face the same challenges their peers in other sectors do: finding the right dates, securing enough space and marketing the show – and then some. Health care shows typically require more meeting room space to go along with showfloors that grow every year, and they often need a wider range of price points when they put together their room blocks (as they seek to accommodate everybody from physicians and executives at major health care institutions to nurses and technicians). What's more, most are association shows and often require a rotation pattern in order to please their members, so it's hard to get comfortable with a single venue.
Sue Sears Hamilton, senior director of the American College of Cardiology Annual Scientific Session, says, “Unless a convention center has a major expansion (there's not enough space),” she added. “For us, it isn't just the convention center, it's the housing block. A recent show, held at Morial in New Orleans, attracted 15,018 professional attendees to a 247,000 net sq. ft. showfloor with 401 exhibiting companies. Add exhibitors and conference attendees to that list of professional attendees, and the required housing block is usually for 28,000 to 30,000 people.”
Gretchen Bliss, director of meetings and conventions with the Assn. of periOperative Registered Nurses, said she wouldn't book the AORN Annual Congress into anywhere new unless she was sure of the details. A recent show, held in March in Orlando, had a 187,200 net sq. ft. showfloor, 588 exhibiting companies and 12,955 attendees, including exhibitors.
Bliss said the additional space convention centers want to sell her often isn't as important as the attitude that comes with it. “The cities that are doing expansions are making show directors (feel wanted),” she added. “For me, that's a big driving factor on why I would consider their city over someone else.”
Look, supporters of the Music City Center are not blind or stupid. We understand getting the building completed will not be all roses and lollipops. There are considerable challenges around financing, hotel HQ, etc. that need to be answered. However, despite the ideological bias by and cherry-picked data of one man (who, by the way, has nothing at stake in the success or failure of projects in our city), there is ample evidence to counter his claims that the sky is falling in the meetings industry, or in Music City - unless of course he is still under the delusion that Music City is Branson.
Pardon the platitude - If we are bold, we may fail. If we are not bold we will fail.
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