Roundtable
Standing out
Issues surrounding stand design exercised the EW-beMatrix
Roundtable at Olympia London recently
ntony Burton, the UK MD of
stand design company beMatrix
kicked off the panel discussion
by identifying two key trend
elements to the fore in exhibition stand
design: “technology and sustainability”,
with GES EMEA’s Marketing and Customer
Experience Director Christine Martin adding
that, “People are now using graphics and
fabrics that are more sustainable”.
That said, did our panel think we are a
wasteful industry still?
“We can only go as fast as our clients want
to go,” said Martin. “On carpets, we’ve done
a lot of work. But there’s still lots of areas to
work on, and graphics is one of them.”
Emma Cartmell, MD of CHS Group,
organiser of the Conference & Hospitality
Show in Leeds, spoke of a different carpeting
experience: “It breaks my heart to spend £6k
on a carpet that doesn’t get recycled. It is not
just a question of what clients want, but of
what is available.” She did, however, give
a positive example: “One venue sponsored
the carpet for my exhibition because it could
be used afterwards by another customer.”
Sustainability tended to cost the organiser,
Cartmell noted. “Hotels will accept towel
reuse because it saves them money, but they
won’t necessarily put sustainable products
in your attendees’ rooms!” she said.
A recent EW news item on an
environmental collaboration between the
Cape Town International Convention Centre
and Investing in African Mining Indaba
tradeshow highlighted an initiative that had
diverted 24,000kg of wood from landfill, and
illustrates that gains of scale can be made.
International organiser Clarion Events’
MD Duncan Reid pointed out that the
tenancy model needed to change, as it
tended to incentivise organisers to get out of
the venue as quickly as possible at the cost of
more sustainable practices.
Mike Seaman, MD of UK-based organiser
Raccoon Events added a graphic account:
“What you see in the skip at the end of a lot
w w w.exhibitionworld.co.uk
of shows is quite horrible.”
Nevertheless, Reid thought tradeshows
had moved on over the past 20 years -
possibly less so in the US because the unions
controlled much activity and pipe and drape
was still entrenched in venues.
“A big driver at Clarion,” he noted,
“is the Net Promoter Score. People
will keep coming back to events if it is
a good experience. We do need to be
communicating better as an industry,
however. We do 300-plus tradeshows a
year and sometimes I don’t know what is
renewable and what’s not.”
Dean Linehan of GES encouraged
organisers to ask: “What we can do to make
the stand experience more impactful?”.
Martin reminded the Roundtable of
“the reality of cost”, a point Reid took
on and suggested that the industry, by
introducing common regulations for the use
of renewable materials, could help drive
economies of scale. “We could set ourselves
a target, say 2024, for not using vinyl
anymore,” he suggested.
Seaman agreed that the desire was there
for action. “We all care about this. It is about
getting some kind of industry standard.”
Reid noted also that although ISO 2012 1
had come in, many didn’t really know what
it entailed. “We need, rather, a simple list of
five things we can do as an industry”.
Emily Challis from organiser Fresh
Montgomery gave the example of Millennial
travellers driving demand for hotels that are
sustainable. “That will come through in the
exhibition industry, too, and impact stand
design,” she said.
beMatrix Sales Director Frederic Liebrecht
said he thought exhibition stands were
already 70% recyclable in some South East
Asian countries. “I think they’re far ahead,”
he said and pointed also to one German
venue that claimed to be 100% sustainable.
“They have a competitive advantage. If BMW
wants to launch a car, they go there,” he said.
Tuhin Quddus from Clarion Energy
thought that the idea of group stands could
be considered both in terms of look and
value over shell scheme. He also called
Issue 2 2019
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