Cover Feature
EN editor Saul Leese talks to
former M&A principal at UBM
and now Events Intelligence,
MD, Mark Parsons, whose
clients include; Informa, Hyve
and Clarion, about the trends
emerging out of the outbreak
and a vision for events to
come.
The last month of the coronavirus
emergency has been the most traumatic
period that the global exhibition
industry has ever faced. Hundreds of
organisers had to postpone or cancel
thousands of events, clearing most
if not all the exhibition calendar for
the next 3-4 months. Those who have
upcoming shows are experiencing a cliff
in sales as exhibitors enter “survival”
mode. The ‘lucky ones’ – those who have
just held their shows – have massive
uncertainty over the next edition and
an uneasy guilt that they may have
accelerated the current crisis.
Before I lay out my perspective, I’d like
to share a guilty pleasure of mine: an
early morning coffee and brioche from
Pavé, a small Italian café on a side-street
near my flat in central Milan. It has
friendly staff, pastry like nothing else,
and an atmosphere which will always be
“my Milan”. Like all cafés they’ve been
closed for the last month but last week
they posted on Facebook something
which made a difference.
They reflected on the new reality of
their situation, they shared a message
24 — April
VISIONS
OF A N EW
LAN DSCAPE
of hope; they weren’t dead or gone,
just closed. They had accepted that
the current situation was anything but
normal, and this acceptance helped
them. The crisis had put everyone
in the same boat, creating a time of
togetherness where the normal day to
day filters had been removed.
They described how the closure
had created opportunities to work
out how to improve their production
cycle, communicate better between
kitchen and front of house, design new
croissants and cakes, and think about
how to build again – it was their chance
to reboot. Only afterwards did they
share the unimaginable financial impact
on their business, and how the anxiety
made them want to cry some days.
Similar to my friends at Pave, this is
a time to reboot the events industry.
I’m not talking about a new bit of
technology or marketing, but the
acceptance the opportunities of a time
when the industry just “stopped” and
then started up again in a radically
different environment. While cost
cutting is inevitable, the opportunities
which exist now are those which will
shape the future of organisers for the
next 10-15 years.
It’s helpful to step back and remember
where we’ve come from. Last year,
when I co-authored WWX, a report on
the tradeshow industry, we identified
that across 15 major markets exhibitor
numbers were increasing at 2.9%
CAGR, and sqm growth had been of
1.5% CAGR over the last 3-5 years. Some
markets were hotter than others, but
overall, the industry was in rude health.
Deal multiples were strong, and new
launches – by both large organisers and
entrepreneurs – were innovative and
disruptive.
Rolling forward to today, we’re in a
different world. Our analysis indicates
that over 1,000 tradeshows have
been postponed in the last month as
coronavirus transmission accelerated in
Europe. While 54 per cent of organisers
have already chosen to reschedule in
2020, 46 per cent have either decided to
cancel 2020 and double down on 2021
or have yet to form a view on when to
hold their next show. It is highly likely
that 20-30 per cent of the 2020 show
calendar globally does not occur.
For those who have announced a new
date in 2020 (on average rescheduled
with a delay of 119 days) questions
remain over whether some of these
events will have to reschedule again.
At the beginning of March we saw the
first postponement of a previously
rescheduled show in Italy. It’s too
soon to draw any real lessons from
the decisions being taken, but it very
likely that the environment in which
future shows are held will be radically
different.
We predict that the following trends
will have a significant impact on the
tradeshow industry over the next 18
months:
• Public health restrictions on
tradeshows will remain in place far
longer than stated as countries battle
local transmission and try to limit
importing new cases. Some venues