Business | Technology
Tech show 'met footfall expectations'
Al Marri says better organisation of event gave impression of lower traffic
- By Scott Shuey, Chief Business Reporter/Nadia Saleem, Staff Reporter
- Published: 00:08 October 25, 2008
- Businessmen mill around the exhibition area of Gitex Week 2008 at the Dubai International Exhibition Centre that ended on Thursday.
- Image Credit: Ahmed Ramzan/Gulf News
Dubai: Listen to the scuttlebutt at this year's Gitex, which closed on Thursday, and you might think it didn't meet expectations.
Helal Saeed Al Marri, the director general of Dubai World Trade Centre - the organisation that runs Gitex - said he heard from the media that foot traffic around the show was unusually low, so he sent out his staff to investigate.
After talking to companies at the show, Al Marri said he found just the opposite. The number of registered trade visitors had actually gone up five to 10 per cent or more every day of the show.
"The number of people they're registering on their stands compared to last year is higher," he said.
Al Marri attributed the negative comments to people to changes at the show misinterpreting what they are seeing.
"People are seeing two things," he said. "They're seeing the organisation. The hall is working better because people actually know the organisation. Last year everyone spent a lot time looking for the stand they wanted, because [the layout] had changed after so many years."
Then, he said, people are focusing on the lack of traffic outside the show.
Public transportation
"I have people calling up to say, 'What's happening with the traffic? Has something happened to Gitex?' Because the traffic is working, people are shocked."
He said more visitors were using public transportation, and that the WTC, RTA and Dubai Police had finally achieved their goal of reducing the impact from traffic. He said the RTA was done a phenomenal job in providing public transport.
In fact, the changes to Gitex seem to be at the root of many of the complaints. Large, glitzy, and noisy exhibitions put on by companies are no longer the norm. Instead, there is more emphasis on the business to business (B2B) environment, due largely to the demands of Gitex exhibitors.
"This needs to be a B2B show," he said. "If this becomes like other B2B shows, like some of the other IT shows were people come just to collect give-aways, then the seriousness of the show goes down, and then we are affected. What we have to focus on is how clients measure [return on investment]."
Even the consumer electronics portion of Gitex, which is located across the hall from the main exhibit, is situated "so people are able to visit that without intruding on the B2B site", he said.
Al Marri said the show has also "clamped down" on clients selling from their booths at the event.
Rumours about how well the show was fairing at times reached the extreme, with some even suggesting the WTC had stopped a number of companies from pulling out of the event by offering free exhibit space. Most of the rumours revolved around HP.
Not true, Al Marri said.
"There is nobody who has not had an increase in how much we charge," he said. "There is nobody this year who has been given anything out of the ordinary."
HP also said the rumour was false. John Hoonhour, the managing director for HP regional operations, said the company was focusing on more B2C (business to consumer) activities at the Gitex Shopper, but it was not backing out of the show. Hoonhour even said HP would be back at Gitex, both the business to business exhibition and the Shopper, next year.
Quality
Gulf News stopped by a number of booths at the show to get their opinions about the show, and in general their impression on the quality of the show was varied. Reza Malekzadeh, a senior director with VMware, a software company that helps large data centres optimise their computer networks, said he was satisfied with both the number and quality of the visitors to the stand.
"I'm very impressed. It's been a long time since I've seen this much energy at a show," he said.
James Calderbank, a manager of Silicon-Valley based Ruckus Wireless, said, "The first day was deathly quiet, which is pretty common on the first day of shows, but the yesterday and day before were pretty good."
However, not all the comments were positive. Epicor, a provider of integrated Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and other business solutions, finds that Gitex does not provide the return in value for their dollar spent.
"From our company's perspective, I don't think Gitex is effective," said Basil Daniells, Epicor's regional sales director, who has participated at Gitex for the past two years.
Touching on specifics, he said the footfall, the type of people coming in to evaluate, the whole set-up, infrastructure and the cost is "just not a value-add for our company".
By Scott ShueyChief Business Reporter
Dubai Emanuele Accolla, Acer's vice-president for Europe, Middle East and Africa, said the reason for his company's pullout from this year's Gitex was that the tradeshow was no longer a good way to promote the company's enterprise business.
"It's too noisy and too difficult to talk seriously about business there," he said.
What he said was most frustrating was the refusal of the DWTC to implement the changes they asked for.
"In this rapidly evolving world, those people had not [accepted] that some changes were happening and decided not to adapt to those changes," he said.
Ultimately, the show wasn't worth the investment, he said, which was substantial.
"Last year if you really wanted a decent place with a nice booth, you had to put on the table not less than half a million dollars," he said, estimating that 40 per cent of the money spent exhibiting at Gitex went to renting space from the Dubai World Trade Centre.
But even though Acer pulled out of the Gitex, it increased its investment in the Gitex Shopper, which is held at the Airport Exhibition Centre. "For the consumer side, Shopper is perfect," he said.
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