At the end of last week, I attended the annual Las Vegas meeting of the Southwest chapter of the Intl. Assn. of Exhibitions and Events. It made me start thinking about all the news, what may be news soon and what might just be rumors about the city that are sending conflicting signals.

Recently, I scanned a report noting that the explosion of primarily Indian casino gambling over the last couple of decades has not put a dent in Las Vegas’ or Atlantic City’s business. All it’s done, supposedly, is whet the appetites of those who hadn’t yet been there, driving more and more visitors to the promised land than ever before.

And certainly when you drive down the Stri...Read More

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One thing this job I’ve got has over jobs I’ve had in the past, at daily and weekly newspapers, is that I don’t have to talk to politicians. That is not to say that the tradeshow industry is unaffected by politics, but the points where government policy and face-to-face marketing coincide are few and far between.

Most readers I talk to wish it was easier for their international exhibitors and attendees to get visas to come to their shows in the United States. They also wish the current administration didn’t keep doing things that make it so easy for people in other countries to decide they don’t like Americans. And most TSW readers probably wish the Federal Aviation Administration would ...Read More

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I learned something valuable about green exhibiting last week when I attended the monthly meeting of the Las Vegas chapter of the Exhibit Designers & Producers Assn. Where there's a will, there may not be a way – at least not one that's straight, clear and unobstructed.

The Las Vegas EDPA invited Harry Lewis, an attorney advisor with the U.S. Envrionmental Protection Agency, to speak at the meeting. Lewis is on an EPA committee charged with setting procurement standards that would require venues bidding to host government meetings to fulfill certain criteria of envirnomental friendliness and sustainability.

Lewis knows meetings and conventions, but, before he visited Las Vegas last week, he apparently knew little about exhibitions. An acquaintance of his from the Las Vegas EDPA took him to see the move-in of the ...Read More

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In our annual survey of show managers late last year, somewhere around November, a majority of organizers famously told Tradeshow Week their No. 1 concern going into 2008 was industry consolidation. Even by the time we printed the results of that survey in mid-December, it was hard to believe that was the worst thing anybody had to be concerned about.

In the mere month and a half since then, a lot has happened in the global economy to make everybody nervous and, I’m guessing, to make those show managers who thought industry consolidation was all they had to worry about feel kind of naïve.

Judging from a couple of stories in our upcoming Feb. 4 issue, at least space rates at the world’s biggest convention center...Read More

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If you’ve ever been to an industry meeting in Asia, you know that they tend toward the staid. While last month’s IAEE Expo! Expo! included scantily-clad girls dancing on tables at the opening night reception, the average CEFCO meeting has its share of solemn, long-winded speeches by dignitaries in flowery Mandarin that must lose something in translation into English.

However, the fourth annual China Expo Forum for Intl. Cooperation (CEFCO 2008) going on right now in Chengdu, China, has something that comes as a surprise: On the first day of the conference, Jan. 15, it was the Western speakers who gushed over the success of the Chinese exhibition industry.

Manfred Wu...Read More

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I was saddened by the news of the death of Michael Hough. Of all the industry leaders who’ve passed away in the seven-plus years I’ve been covering the tradeshow business, Hough had the most direct impact on me.

His general industry influence may have been relatively small compared to, say, Bob Krakoff. But his opinions were huge and smart, and he shared them freely.

I hadn’t been at Tradeshow Week two weeks before my editor in chief got her first e-mail from Hough complaining about something in one of my stories. Although I was devastated then, I don’t even remember what it was now. I could’ve said something like a show was semiannual when it was actually biennial. He noticed those things – using “exposition” in a show name ...Read More

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Sometimes, as a reporter, a story that starts out as one thing takes on a life of its own in a very short period of time due to unforeseen circumstances. Such is the case with a story currently posted on our Web site, “New Orleans’ Image Suffers,” that will also appear in our Jan. 7 issue.

 

It all started on the showfloor at the Intl. Assn. of Exhibitions and Events’ Expo! Expo! at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas Dec. 10-12. My colleague Heidi Genoist and I met Bob Johnson, who heads up the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans.

 

Johnson was bemoaning a University of New Orleans study released earlier that day based on a survey o...Read More

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A lot of cities are working on revitalizing their downtowns. Oftentimes, once-thriving areas have waned over the years as people and businesses moved to the suburbs, but now more and more downtowns are making a comeback, or at least trying to.

I was recently in Dallas, and the skyline is dotted with cranes everywhere. I was in town for the 50^th anniversary of the CVB and convention center, and was lucky enough to have someone from the bureau take me on a tour of downtown.

We walked the arts center, with three art museums already there; a performing arts center, theater and refurbished arts school are also on the way. Pretty impressive. 

Mixed-use developments, such as Victory Park, have high-end hotels that are fairly new, such a...Read More

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We had some bad news this week in Las Vegas. Over the weekend, as he ran for his life, a man was shot to death in front of his two children at a public park following a dispute with a woman who thought the victim had pushed her son off a swing. The shooter was thought to be the woman’s friend.

 

What, you’re probably asking, does this have to do with tradeshows? Bear with me.

 

Las Vegas is getting more violent. According to an FBI report released last month, violent crime in the city and unincorporated Clark County rose 32 percent in 2006, compared with the previous year.

 

Lots of cities have crime problems; t...Read More

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Here at Tradeshow Week, we pride ourselves on reporting the news, which means remaining completely objective and reporting the entire story, good or bad.

I have written stories that didn’t shed the best light on certain companies, destinations, people, etc. Some sources seem better able to handle this than others. For example, when Gaylord Entertainment went back and forth on whether it would build a new convention center and hotel in Chula Vista, Calif., they never called to say, “Hey, why are you reporting only the bad news?”

Recently, on at least two different stories, one by me and another by Senior Editor Heidi Genoist, we were accused afterward of focusing only on the “negative” and of having an agenda when we reported on the stories.

...Read More

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An unfortunate thing happened on the way to press with my story, “Rival Shows Get Up Close and Personal” in the Sept. 17 issue. One of the rivals wouldn’t talk.

 

I hate to say “I told you so,” but the other Tradeshow Week editors and I have written past columns on the mistake of not commenting, and this story provides a good example of why.

 

While covering the fashion tradeshows that took place in August at the Sands Expo & Convention Center/Venetian Resort Hotel Casino in Las Vegas, I noticed there were two lingerie shows overlapping there. It didn’t take long to discover that t...Read More

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When a butterfly flaps its wings in Malaysia, a hurricane happens in Florida – or at least that's close to how the saying goes. In other words, something half a world away can have a direct effect on something else.

 

I witnessed this phenomenon firsthand on my recent trip to Scotland for my honeymoon. My husband and I saw a news report on the BBC about a bank called Northern Rock going into a tailspin because it had lent money to some other banks caught up in the subprime loan mortgage crisis in the United States.

 

According to news reports, the Northern Rock was in serious trouble.

People with money in the bank panicked, and long lines started to form at ...Read More

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