US - The Chicago-based Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society has rejected its hometown in favour of Las Vegas, as a result of what it claims has been a ten-fold increase in electrical costs.
The 2012 HIMSS convention will now be held at the Sands Expo Convention Centre on 20-24 February.
President and CEO H. Stephen Lieber said the move was necessary because of the high cost of electrician services at McCormick Place convention centre, where the 2009 event was held earlier this year.
“HIMSS’ electrical bill went from US$40,000 in Orlando in 2008 to $240,000 in Chicago,” said Lieber. Individual exhibitors who had identical-sized booths in the two cities saw their electrical bills go up by a range of from four times to as much as 10 times.
“You expect higher costs in a more unionised city like Chicago, but it was not a difference in the hourly labour rates so much as inefficient and archaic works rules, slowness in how quickly work got done and the number of people it took to get work done.”
After negotiations with the electrician’s union in Chicago, Lieber says he did not get “adequate assurance” that he’d have a different pricing experience in 2012 than he had in 2009.
Attendance at the 2009 event totalled 27,429, down from 29,179 in Orlando. Lieber predicts the 2010 event, in Atlanta in March, could drop as low as 25,000, depending on the speed of economic recovery.
