Paul Woodward takes on an exhibition Mission Impossible and looks into the crystal ball at what may be coming down the events track in 2022
There is a moment in every Mission Impossible film where Tom Cruise almost falls off a tall building or out of an airplane. Cue high tension music and straining muscles as he, possibly assisted by the outstretched hand of one of his team members, claws his way back to safety.
Right now, having signed off from the Exhibition World guest editor role, it feels as though we’re only halfway back into the plane. Things were looking pretty good there for a while, but then along came omicron (which sounds for all the world like something green and bubbling in a little vial that could cause catastrophe if the IMF team can’t foil the villain).
At the beginning of June 2021 in my first comment as guest editor I spoke of the ‘great reset’ and the important contribution that exhibitions would make to that. That wasn’t all wrong, but it is certainly taking a lot longer than we all hoped for things to get back on track and the reset is far from complete.
We’re still seeing a topsy-turvy world where the US has celebrated being back to about 50% of 2019 business levels in Q3. Europe was also talking of roughly 50%, although that seems to have been derailed in recent weeks by a winter delta wave in the northern countries which have been hit by an omicron tsunami. We are, unfortunately, back in a world of show postponements and severe restrictions on travel, even lockdowns in some countries.
Mixed picture in Asia
The picture is more mixed in Asia. China was looking set for a relatively normal year and Informa recently reported to its investors that its larger events were back at 85–90% of pre-pandemic scale. But the Chinese government continues its aggressive zero Covid policy and the second half of the year has seen a number of lightning lockdowns and last-minute cancellations of important events in the major markets of Shanghai, Shenzhen,
and others.
The rest of Asia is operating at very low levels with Informa also reporting only 15% of 2019 business levels. India is now on a recovery track and, so far, seems to be avoiding the next wave. Only the most optimistic would imagine, however, that it can be spared at least some impact from omicron.
Positive signs
So much, so underwhelming. Where might we go to look for some more encouragement? I see some positive signs in several places. Firstly, we’re pretty much all still here. I was seriously concerned in the first half of last year that we would lose organisers, large and small, as business dried up. But they’ve proven to be a resilient bunch and, even after two years of very disrupted business, the number of organiser casualties is vanishingly small.
Sadly, the same cannot be said for suppliers and we have written about that several times over the past half year. Craig Newman, group CEO of GL Events South Africa Group, when we spoke to him about Africa in October 2021 shockingly told us that “90% or possibly even more [South African] service providers are either out of business or in business rescue”.
Secondly, as shows have been permitted to reopen, we’ve seen hard evidence of the strength of
the face-to-face business model. Time after time, I’ve spoken to organisers who, while conceding that they’re not yet back to normal, reported how delighted they were to see the enthusiasm of their participants, exhibitors and visitors, to get back to doing business. As Easyfairs’ Eric Everard succinctly put it to us, “there is an energy in the room you can never have online”.
I am personally enthusiastic about digital opportunities, but as far as trade fairs and exhibitions are concerned, the virtual event genie never really got out of the bottle. I had speculated last year that harnessing the live video streaming which dominates Chinese B2C e-commerce might launch a truly viable and competitive format of online event in the B2B world, too. It did not.
That being said, serious attention is now, finally, being paid to harnessing the power of the data that events generate. The larger players are speaking of 25% or more of their revenues coming from data by 2024. Some may even regard that as unambitious.
The fierce response from organisers to suggestions that they might share ownership of the data they generate with tech service providers was indicative of the recognition which has dawned of just how important it could become. It’s also a clear indication that this is a brave new world that has people in it who are generally not employed in the exhibitions industry right now. And those people can be expensive and very demanding. Successfully panning gold from your data lake is not going to be easy.
Finally, the massive challenges of the past two years have meant that the industry has been forced to come together in ways which might not have been predicted before. As I spoke to people all around the world, one of the most common messages was that “they don’t understand us”. Governments were found to lack any real sense of what we do and industry associations in many countries ill-equipped to put that right.
The associations and leading member companies which guide them have been on a steep learning curve. Possibly one silver lining in the very thick clouds which have swirled around us is that we will emerge from the pandemic with a significantly improved capacity to get our message out. The fact that industry has been able to come together sufficiently and coherently to win itself a platform in Glasgow at COP26 to address arguably the most important issue of our day is a very encouraging sign.
So, I leave you with the thought that, while Tom Cruise is not yet back in that plane, he almost certainly will be eventually. It looks as though it may take most of 2022 really to get things back on track. All that I have seen and heard over the past six months, though, makes me think that there will be a bruised but still strong exhibition industry ready to take advantage of the opportunities which emerge.
Finally, many thanks to the whole team at Mash Media for their confidence and support while I have been doing the guest editor role. Exhibition World is a great project which deserves everyone’s support.
