Citing labor and travel costs, the Washington, D.C.-based Society of the Plastics Industry (SPI) will hold its 2012 and 2015 trade shows in Orlando instead of Chicago, where it's been for nearly 40 years, it announced this week.
In response to feedback from exhibitors and attendees, who said in surveys that the cost of meeting in Chicago has gotten too high, SPI's 2012 meeting committee conducted a systematic cost comparison of potential meeting destinations. Ultimately, the committee recommended that the association move its triennial trade show—the International Plastics Showcase, known as NPE—to Orlando, where it concluded that exhibitors and attendees would save an average of 48 percent on utilities for booths, 19 percent on drayage and rigging services for exhibitors, 23 percent on lodging, and between 11 percent and 19 percent on travel.
"After carrying out due diligence on possible venues for NPE 2012, the NPE executive committee determined that by moving the show to Orlando, SPI could save the plastics industry up to $20 million," SPI Board Chair James Buonomo said in a statement. "A savings of this magnitude will play a substantial role in SPI's mission to stimulate our industry's economic recovery."
The loss of NPE, one of the top five manufacturing trade shows in the United States—and the largest in terms of both weight density and power draw by equipment operating on the trade show floor—is a major blow to Chicago, which lost another major trade show last week, when the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society announced that it would be moving its 2012 annual meeting to Las Vegas.
"This is a serious situation," said Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. "Because if the shows keep dwindling down, there will be less and less activity at McCormick Place, and that will have a deep effect on the state, county and city governments."
A task force of officials from the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority (MPEA)—which owns Chicago's McCormick Place convention center—Chicago's convention and visitors bureau, the unions that work at McCormick Place, the restaurant industry and Chicago hotels already is meeting to discuss ways to make Chicago a more competitive meetings destination.
Said MPEA CEO Juan Ochoa, "We will take a look at this very important economic engine, because our engine is in need of a major tuneup."
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