International development can be hampered by a range of factors. Many countries
lack venue capacity, and the quality of facilities can be poor – the worst often located
in the capital city. In some territories, the exhibition culture is undeveloped, while in
others there can be a two-tier market. For example, in China there are low-priced
domestic events, which resemble fairs, as well as international events which are far
more like regular trade shows.
A classic international development strategy is to geo-clone events into new
territories. German organizers have been particularly adept at this, often using
international clones as a mechanism to strengthen and sell into the main show in
Germany. For example, Messe Frankfurt has exported its German brands such as
Heimtextil to Russia and India; Techtextil to North America and India; Ambiente to
Italy and Japan; and Beautyworld to Japan and the Middle East. An alternative is to
acquire a local organizing company in an attractive geography, for example,
Diversified has done this in Australia, as has Reed Exhibitions in Brazil.
The Internet and events
The dotcom boom had pundits predicting the demise of the events sector. They
were wrong. While larger slices of marketing budgets are now dedicated to e-media,
this growth has been more at the expense of traditional media such as print
advertising than of the events budget. Attendees still value the ability to network,
learn in person, and interact with suppliers and peers and to discuss products and
services. While e-media can distribute the content of events, it cannot compete with
the most highly valued aspects of event attendance. We do not see this changing in
the near or mid term.
As traditional media owners see their traditional print revenues eroding through
online migration, events have moved higher on their list of priorities as a source of
more predictable revenues and profits.
What is more, some leading events organizers are now seeing the Internet as a
useful aid to their properties, although harnessing it remains a challenge. Those who
have substantial brands and positions in an industry sector are now actively
exploiting the Internet to attain a long-sought-after goal: transforming the one-time-a-
year creation of a physical community into a year-round relationship. We expect that
in pursuit of this goal, organizers will target electronic acquisitions of all sizes, in
order to bring various forms of content or aspects of community to their brands.
In the training sector, e-learning (also known as distance learning) has had a
significant impact. As we said earlier, e-learning has measurably cannibalized
traditional revenues as participation has moved to low-revenue online media from
high revenue face-to-face training. Leading organizers are addressing the problem
by supplementing traditional learning with e-materials and competing with their
competitors: seeking themselves to take share in distance learning from rivals.
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