Top Learnings from the UFI Asia-Pacific Conference

I attended the UFI Asia-Pacific Conference held in Malaysia earlier this month. With close to 220 delegates from more than 20 countries and regions, it was the first post-COVID in-person Conference for the region’s exhibition professionals. For those who have not had the pleasure of visiting Malaysia, I highly recommend it. The country is a professional place to hold expos and events, beautiful, the food delicious and its people are kind. It takes a while to get there from Las Vegas, but that’s a whole different story!

The big news is that ALL of Asia is open for business. FINALLY.

This means we should see an uptick in the US and Europe with the return of Chinese exhibitors and buyers, especially as air routes are expanded. SE Asia has been open longer, so they’re already seeing improved numbers at their events, some back to or exceeding 2019 levels. The fact Informa is plunking down close to $1 billion for Tarsus, who has quite a few shows in the region, says a lot.

 During the Conference's opening session, Mark Temple-Smith, COO Informa Markets (who will be heading up the integration of Tarsus with Informa), mentioned they are still looking for acquisitions. So are a lot of other companies right now. Interested in selling your show? DM me!

Other Takeaways:

Hong Kong: The mask mandate finally dropped on March 1st. Informa’s Jewelry Show opened with over 20,000 people the first day. Coincidence? Not so much, according to HKCEC’s (Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre) MD Monica Lee Müller. Interestingly, the venue lost no shows from COVID. Some shows “temporarily” moved to other locations, mainly Singapore, Thailand, and Dubai. They were so successful that show organizers decided to keep them in the new locations as well as in Hong Kong. (Not the traditional geo-cloning approach, but hey, it worked!)

Hong Kong has some great subsidies available for large business expos and events, as do Thailand and Malaysia. For more information on those, feel free to message me.

China: SNIEC, the Shanghai New International Expo Centre, the only Western-owned and run venue in China reopens later this month after almost 16 months of being closed. Pre-Covid, its occupancy rate was over 85 percent, if not higher. The Shenyang New World Expo Centre is hosting four events this month. (FYI – Shenyang is a city with over 9 million people and 42 million in the province.)

Most organizers and venues expect it will take until 2024 for normalization to occur. Those shows in China being held fourth quarter may see it sooner.

We’re open for projects! If you want to improve your show’s international reach, inbound or outbound, ITI can help. Email me at Stephanie@intltradeinfo.com or message me here at LinkedIn.

As always thanks for reading and subscribing!