In June Hamburg hosted two major events by UFI - The Global Association of the Exhibition Industry: European Open Seminar and Sustainable Development Focus Meeting.
The former - the European Open Seminar – was divided into two days of presentations focused on the topic: "Changing customer expectations: from renting space to facilitating business". In particular, Jochen Witt, former president at Cologne Trade Fair, and Michel Duck, Vice President at UBM Asia, stressed the importance of determining the selling price of an exhibition in the generation of sales, bearing in mind that determining the price of an exhibition is too often based on costs or business competition, leaving out a fundamental aspect, i.e. the value perceived by exhibiting customers.
Many representatives of the exhibition industry (including Barbara Faccendoni, Exhibition Marketing Director at Fiera Milano) and external experts, in turn, have presented the new trends in the field of technologies and lifestyles, which have an impact also on the exhibition context. Environmental, economic, social sustainability were the topics dealt during the latter event: The Sustainable Development Focus Meeting. Six finalists (including organizers and fairgrounds) were appointed for the first UFI award on sustainability. The winner will be introduced during the next congress, scheduled for November in Abu Dhabi.
Several initiatives, projects and strategies were presented, including the experiences of Cape Town conference center, where it has been explained how many suppliers, the representatives of the local micro-businesses and female entrepreneurs, have organized their business after becoming suppliers of the congress center; the Amsterdam exhibition center, which focused its attention on the results of several projects about environmental sustainability, including freight through channel networks; the Geneva exhibition center presented an ambitious project which involves the use of the water from lake of Geneva for the refrigeration of both fair pavilions and other areas of the city.
Fiera Milano news n.47 – July/August 2012
