Concept of the workshop:

An open discussion and debate on ’state-of-the-art’ and future demands on educating exhibitions and fairs at university / college faculties, regular and postgraduate education, on anticipated impacts and proceedings of accession to European Union.

Participants (by invitation only)

• Top university / college lecturers from each CENTREX member country (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine)
• Marketing specialists from the CENTREX members
• Representatives of exhibition / fair associations and organisations of CENTREX member countries.

Working language

English, German, Czech

Why organising this workshop?

Why did CENTREX decided to organise this meeting, why do we think education is needed?

CENTREX was founded just a little bit more than 5 years ago with the idea how to collect and how to present statistical data so that they were comparable and transparent. But CENTREX has realised that this was quite easy to be reached and the next goals appeared as lobbying, promotion and education.

Why lobbying?

We realised that our local authorities, political circles does not understand that trade fairs, exhibition industry can help them to create the transparent economy, in Poland exhibition industry was an anti-inflation element, and fairs and exhibitions vitalise the cities and regions. So it was the basic reason for lobbying.

We realised also that promotion is needed.

People do not understand too much about contemporary exhibition industry. Made some press articles, educated some journalists, we are trying to organise some special events juts to show the potential customers that exhibition industry is very important, it is needed in market-oriented economy. To show that this industry is very different to those they have used in the centrally planned economy.

But sooner or later we came to the educational problem:

if 50 of us, organisers understand trade fairs and are able to participate at events of the trade it does not necessarily mean that our customers understand what contemporary trade fairs are for. Education has become so important because e.g. shortly after the economic transformation many entrepreneurs recognised trade fairs as a simple selling tool, not a marketing tool. After some years the market has become more complicated, harder to sell and now many of our exhibitors say trade fairs do not work so good as before, as a selling tool. So we should find suitable argumentation towards them and we should educate them that marketing is badly needed, personal relations have grown in importance and about the real up-to-date values, merits and effectiveness of trade fairs.

Who needs education:

• Trade fair organisers – no doubt about that
• Exhibitors, they are players on the market, and they do not always use it as it can be
• Visitors – it is a preliminary finding in the recently started CENTREX CEE visitor survey.
  

A few information about that:

• 43 p.c. of the respondents say distance does not matter if visiting a good fair,
• majority of them share the visit experience with more then 3 persons,
• Loyalty – 66 p.c. answered they visited the fairs more than once before. (26 p.c. are for the first time),
• 88 p.c. says trade fairs help them making decisions,
• Overwhelming part of them consider trade fairs will remain useful for them in the next 5-6 years,
• But: more than 80 p.c. said they do not prepare themselves for the visit

So there is a gap to be filled also by education for visitors.

World of economy and social life has changed as a result of the globalisation, of IT revolution and of fast growing consumer societies, of emerging new distribution patterns and marketing tools.