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Dubai Can Learn from Hong Kong’s Knack for Trade Fairs

DUBAI/HONG KONG — Hong Kong, long renowned for its savvy traders, has parlayed its success as a commercial gateway to mainland China into a newer role as a favourite venue for international 
trade fairs.

Three simultaneous fairs held earlier this year at Hong Kong’s downtown exhibition complex attest to the city’s allure as a setting for business exhibitions, even if the recession deterred some cost-conscious foreigners from traveling far to attend the events. By staying relevant even in tough economic times, Hong Kong offers clues as to what Dubai might do to raise its own profile as an 
exhibition center.

Among these clues is that financial support from the government can be crucial to a show’s success, particularly when business is suffering from a downturn as it is today. Another lesson: Don’t over-reach by trying to stage all manner of exhibitions but aim to host shows selectively for industries in which you have a natural advantage or appeal.

Dubai is gearing up now for several of the biggest fairs on its trade-show calendar, including Cityscape and Gitex Technology Week in October and the Dubai Airshow and Big 5 construction fair in November. A general concern among organizers, exhibitors and buyers alike is the extent to which the recession may hurt turnout at the events.

Cityscape, for example, will have a hard time generating as much excitement as it did last year, when the property show attracted more than 1,000 exhibitors and almost 70,000 visitors. Next month’s show comes in the wake of the collapse in Dubai’s real estate market, and around 30 per cent fewer exhibitors have registered to participate this time around, Cityscape spokeswoman 
Nathalie Visele told Khaleej Times last week in Dubai.

The upcoming Big 5 construction show, on the other hand, will “surprise the market” with more exhibitors and a bigger exhibition space than it had in 2008, said Simon Mellor of DMG World Media, the fair’s organiser.

“Dubai is an easy place to do business, it’s a relaxed place to spend time, and it has the facilities,” Mellor said last week in Dubai. “We could not put on this show anywhere else in the Middle East with the ease and the scale that we have here
in Dubai.”

Hong Kong’s experience, however, points to possible constraints on Dubai in its effort to become an even more important player in the business 
of exhibitions.

Some cities are happy to mount a single big trade show at a time. Hong Kong orchestrated three at once – for electronics, lighting and computer technology companies. And that was just at the Hong Kong Exhibition and Convention Centre. A rival trade fair took place the same week in April at an equally enormous site near Hong Kong 
International Airport.

“Fantastic,” was Deepak Khaitan’s verdict on the Hong Kong Electronics Fair. Khaitan, the managing director of Eveready Industries India Ltd., had come in search of new products and suppliers for his battery business in Kolkata. “There’s no reason for us to go anywhere else,” he said, pausing on his rounds of the futuristic centre’s 10 voluminous 
exhibition halls.

Visitor numbers at the four-day event were down by 3.7 per cent from last year, a decrease that the shows’ organisers ascribed to diminished travel budgets at many of the companies that might otherwise have come to display their latest wares, meet potential buyers, or discover new sources of supply.

Of more than 3,600 firms exhibiting their goods, most were Chinese, and many were participating for the 
first time.

“I think this show is more important because of the recession,” said M.K. Chiu, Director of Jinghong Industrial (HK) Co., Ltd., a maker of flexible silicon computer keyboards. Jinghong’s sales in the US and Europe are down 40 per cent from last year, and Chiu hoped to offset that weakness by cultivating buyers in new markets, including the Middle East, where he said he had already sold thousands of spill-resistant 
Arabic keyboards.

Americans and Europeans also were buying fewer USB memory sticks from Marsilli Product Factory (HK) Ltd., a Hong Kong firm with a factory in the nearby Chinese city of Shenzhen. Marketing Manager Keith Cheung called the fair a “hot” event and said Marsilli needed to be here to showcase its newest products. As dance music boomed from his display stand, women in yellow miniskirts performed a catwalk, each holding a single memory stick designed as a miniature camera, toaster or chainsaw.

This year’s show attracted more Middle Easterners than usual, said Melody Song, head of sales for Shangyu North Electron Manufacture Co., Ltd., a maker of portable freezers in the mainland city of Shangyu. Still, orders were scarce at her firm’s booth. “All the clients say the cost is too high,” Song said.

Mindful of the recession’s impact, the Hong Kong Trade Development Council, a government agency that organized the three-in-one fair, quadrupled its marketing budget this year to attract more buyers from emerging markets. The council paid for air tickets and hotel rooms for an unprecedented 6,000 potential buyers, all of them new to these shows. It also boosted by 50 per cent the subsidies it paid to local small and medium-sized firms to help them promote their 
products overseas.

This extra spending, in tandem with expanded export credit insurance coverage from the Hong Kong government, gave a boost to the exhibition and made it more worthwhile for participants.

Raymond Yip, the council’s assistant executive director, justified the higher spending by noting that trade shows contributed “enormous economic benefits” to Hong Kong and accounted for 6.4 per cent of the city’s economic output. Hong Kong’s exhibitions include the world’s largest gift fair and biggest watch and clock show.

One of Hong Kong’s biggest strengths as a hub for shows featuring consumer products is its close proximity to the factories in southern China that produce so many of the gadgets displayed here. Most of these plants are just a few hours’ driving time from the city.

“That’s why the fair is here: The factories are here,” said Philippe Crompton-Roberts, director of electronics 
exporter SG Ltd.

Many buyers said they planned to travel to factories in mainland China immediately after the show. Some needed to touch base with existing suppliers there, while others wanted to visit manufacturers they learned about at
 the exhibition.

Dubai, however, has a much smaller manufacturing hinterland than Hong Kong, and several buyers said that this limits its appeal as an exhibition venue.

“In Hong Kong, you can go afterward to the factory. In Dubai, it’s all trading companies – no suppliers, no manufacturing companies,” said F. A. Shirvani, the R&D manager for Snowa, one of Iran’s biggest producers of 
home appliances.

In addition, steep prices in Dubai for hotel rooms and restaurant meals have discouraged some visitors in the past, though the recession has spurred many hotels in the emirate to slash their room rates this year. Dubai also is a harder city to get around in than compact Hong Kong, though the new Metro, and the post-boom easing of Dubai’s traffic jams, have made it somewhat easier 
to navigate.

Overall, buyers and exhibitors said, Dubai will find it hard to play in the same league as Hong Kong if it wants to hosts trade fairs for consumer products, many of which originate in China. The emirate’s best bet, it seems, would be to focus instead on shows for service industries in which it has inherent expertise, such as tourism, aviation and construction. The Dubai Airshow and Arabian Travel Mart, for instance, are widely acclaimed.

Yip of the Hong Kong Trade Development Council believes that every successful trade-show hub has at least one of three attributes: a good brand, a nearby production base and a large regional market. Dubai, a comparative newcomer to the trade-show game, is still building its brand, and it lacks China’s production capacity. But the emirate is second to none as a trade-fair venue in the large Middle East market.

Yip acknowledged Dubai’s unique standing in this region, then added a note of caution: “Your success as an exhibition center is not self-proclaimed.” 


bruce@khaleejtimes.com