Despite a 12-percent increase in advance registration versus 2007, the Motivation Show (IT&ME), at Chicago’s McCormick Place Sept.23-25, succumbed to unraveling business conditions, as attendance was down at least 6 percent from 2007, according to Hall-Erickson Inc.
Peter Erickson, managing director of the show, said attendance figures, due for release in early November, are “not going to meet expectations ... It’s very disappointing. It appears that people were planning to come and didn’t.” Further, one exhibitor, who asked not to be named, said the show’s aisles “were much emptier than in the past few years.”
Erickson said there was no doubt that the current economic news and [corporate] travel restrictions hurt attendance. Besides planners’ inability to travel, he said, most of them have less meetings and incentive programs to create, reduced budgets, or fewer attendees at each—or all three.
Some proof: The Incentive Research Foundation’s Pulse survey results, released at the start of the show, found that 81 percent of respondents said the worsening economy was having an impact on their ability to plan group programs.
“As an industry, we need to make the case that during times of economic uncertainty, employee engagement is even more important,” Erickson said, “and you can’t effectively engage employees without rewards and recognition.”
The educational component of the show, beefed up in 2007, was designed to address this. And it seemed to resonate; registration for that part of the event saw a 16-percent increase. Dubbed “Executive Leadership Conference: Strategies to Motivate, Empower, and Reward,” the component covered topics such as motivational triggers for the millennial generation now filling the ranks of the frontline workforce and how to use meetings, incentives, and other events to truly influence the behavior of both employees and customers.
On top of those challenges, there’s a new threat to the Motivation Show as the biggest North American event in the travel rewards and recognition niche. Reed Travel Exhibitions (RTE), owner of the European Incentive, Business Travel and Meetings Exhibition (EIBTM) held in Barcelona each year, announced the inaugural Americas IBTM, June 29 to July 1, 2010, in Baltimore.
The hosted-buyer event will mainly connect U.S. planners with overseas suppliers. RTE forecasts 3,000 attendees for the first AIBTM, which is committed to Baltimore through 2014. The city was chosen for its infrastructure and proximity to the concentration of planners in the Northeast.
Originally published Oct. 20, 2008