EMIF earns itself one last chance…

24 mars 2011

Next year is the last chance for EMIF. Everyone has been saying it every year for the last 10 years. But this time it’s true. The new management team has won a reprieve and has another opportunity to show it can not only fulfil but exceed expectations of exhibitors and visitors alike.

Figures are still not available, but it looks like visitor numbers held up to around last year’s level. ‘Quiet but quality’ has always been the standard mantra. But for 2012 this will need to change to ‘busier and better’, if EMIF is to have a future on the European meetings & events stage.

The exhibition’s long-term strategy for survival must be to profile itself for close-by meetings & events and concentrate its marketing for both exhibitors and Hosted Buyers on Benelux, Northern France, SE England and Germany’s industrial heartland – in fact anywhere where there’s a high-speed rail link which can bring meeting professionals into Brussels in under 2 hours and ensures they only spend one day out of the office. EMIF will need to create some serious new partnerships with the rail companies.

The number of exhibitors also has to more than double to at least 350 to make the show viable for economically for the organisers and psychologically for the visitors. There was no France, Switzerland, Germany, Scandinavia, Spain, UK …a lot of effort and incentives will need to be put into winning them back to EMIF 2012.

On the visitor side, the show must attract at least 400 Hosted Buyers from nearby Europe, as well as a substantial increase in corporate & association visitors from Belgium. One fundamental question also needs some research: Yes, there are thousands of associations & institutions in Brussels, but are the people who take the decisions about where future congresses will be held also based here? Many people in the industry think not.

And this year?

The atmosphere was good; there were quality buyers and new business opportunities; the corporate seminars were educational and well attended….good foundations to build on.

For me the stars of the show (MGh will be happy to hear!) were Francophone from Wallonia. And by the way Wallonia-Brussels Tourism did have a lively attractive village of stands, although smaller than in previous years, coordinated by MICE specialist Laurence Dogne.

Back to the stars – they were a team of four people working from a minimalist stand of 6m². Sophie Coument and Hotel de la Source Spa Francorchamps were out smiling, selling and creating new business for themselves and Wallonia. They were there to work and certainly didn’t sit behind a counter, waiting for business to come to them.

To be fair, the Flanders village was also well-designed, animated and did good business. On the other hand the VisitBrussels area with its new branding and colours (in addition to blue!) was rather cold and dead, except for a brief moment when it was livened up by Brussels Mayor, Freddy Thielemans and a team from Washington DC who came over especially to sign a new alliance agreement with Brussels. More on VisitBrussels rebranding and Power Cities next week….

A big question for the future?

Are exhibitions in their current form relevant to the Facebook generation who have very different ways of finding product information and ideas through their social networks? For them doing business face-to-face has a whole new meaning, and much of it is virtual.

This is also likely to affect the future of the meetings industry in general.

Bruce Taylor