PolyU: Focus on accessibility is the key to exhibition market development

28 Dec 2017  2047 | World Travel News

When choosing whether to attend an exhibition, exhibitors will go almost anywhere there is potential for successful business but visitors prefer destinations with good accessibility and an attractive leisure environment, according to Dr Karin Weber of the School of Hotel and Tourism Management (SHTM) at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and her co-researcher Dr Xin Jin. Their recently published research study explores the attractiveness of exhibition destinations from visitor and organiser perspectives, providing practical guidelines that destinations and organisers can use to evaluate and develop destination resources.

The researchers argue that an exhibition can benefit a host city or region by providing an important economic boost and enhancing its “image and reputation as a leading business events destination”. Given these substantial benefits, it is unsurprising that potential exhibition destinations often receive government support and other investments to develop purpose-built exhibition infrastructure and facilities. However, to be successful an exhibition must attract both organisers and exhibitors, but these two parties may not look for the same features in a potential destination. As exhibition organisers are responsible for selecting a destination that will attract as many visitors and exhibitors as possible, the researchers note that it is important they understand “what constitutes an attractive exhibition destination for both parties”.

In 2015, for instance, China hosted 9,200 exhibitions. Large and international exhibitions are usually held in the first-tier cities of Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou, with a much smaller proportion scattered throughout second-tier cities. However, intense competition has developed as destinations realise the potential benefits of becoming successful exhibition venues. To explore what drives such success, the researchers conducted two studies, one to investigate visitors’ perceptions of exhibition destination attractiveness, and the second to explore the factors that are most important to exhibition organisers when selecting suitable sites.

In their first study, the researchers conducted a survey of visitors attending nine large-scale exhibitions at six exhibition centres in Shanghai, the leading exhibition city in China, and Hangzhou, Nanjing and Wuhan, the capitals of their respective provinces in the Yangtze River Delta. Two of the exhibitions were the “largest of their kind in China” with around 1,000 exhibitors and a good proportion of international visitors, whereas the others were national-level exhibitions. The exhibitions were mainly for industrial goods, although three were for consumer goods but targeted industry distributors and buyers rather than consumers.

The respondents completed a questionnaire on the attractiveness of the destination and their intention to revisit. Every fifth visitor leaving the exhibition halls was asked to complete the survey, resulting in 535 completed questionnaires. The respondents were predominantly from China, although 100 visitors had travelled from various countries worldwide. Most visitors were from small- to medium-sized enterprises, although the exhibitions in Shanghai attracted more visitors from large enterprises.

The survey revealed that for visitors, accessibility is the most important factor in deciding the attractiveness of an exhibition destination. Accessibility includes the city’s location and the ease of traveling to it, transport to the venue within the city and the ease of finding information about the city. Following in order of importance were the venue facilities, the destination’s leisure environment – for instance, whether it is safe, friendly, clean and has tourist attractions – its economic environment and the “cluster effect”, or whether the host city is a centre for manufacturers, distributors and suppliers of the exhibition products. This last factor is generally considered important in deciding the attractiveness of an exhibition destination from the exhibitor’s perspective but visitors considered it the least important factor in their decision making.

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