Hidden costs
Companies do not always feel adequately informed about what their exhibition appearance will ultimately cost.
Exhibitors expectations and exhibition organisers performance do not always tally when it comes to service delivery and service readiness in day-to-day business. One of the companies polled by m+a complained of "total inflexibility". This fits with the negative reply from almost 45 % of interviewees to the question: "Do you know which organiser services are generally contained in the rental?" The figure is fully four percentage points higher than in last year's survey. Almost three-quarters of all the exhibiting companies interviewed took exception to the hidden costs that a wide variety of organisers bill as additional expenses after the show. More than a third of respondents view water and power charges as the major bone of contention, but organisers don't seem to think much of transparent pricing in other respects either. All sorts of items such as GEMA (the German Copyright Society) royalties, refuse collection, haulage costs, charges for calculating exhibition stand statics, advertising and catalogue entries are apparently not, or not adequately specified in organisers quotations.
Each exhibition company acts differently, they insist - the gap between promises and reality often being huge with private exhibition organisers. At well-booked exhibitions in particular some exhibitors are especially vociferous about the lack of good service, notably in stand allocation. Newsletters seem to be popular with many organisers as an effective way of keeping exhibitors ‘sweet' and demonstrating closeness to the customer. Around 72 % of exhibitors have experience of them as a customer bonding tool. Bonus programmes, on the other hand - which no fewer than 75 % of respondents last year said they would like to have - are currently offered to a mere 18 %.
m+a report Nr.6 / 2006 vom 22.09.2006
m+a report vom 22. September 2006