International Confex 2019

On Wednesday 27th February 2019, the Be Exhibitions team went along to International Confex at London Olympia. This is a show for the event and exhibition industry and provided a great opportunity to network , see what’s new in the industry and see what’s being discussed.

There were some fantastic stands, suppliers and venues all advertising what they are capable of and some of the options available to us and our clients. Everything from AV, giveaways all the way through to the hotels with the comfiest beds; something for everyone could be seen at Confex.

However, our drive was to see the 14:00 seminar at the Keynote Theatre, titled: How to make the events industry sustainable. With the panel made up of Paddy Power, Joe Atkinson and Neils Temmerman; each brought their own argument and opinion to the sustainability argument. However, one thing is very clear is that our industry is simply not doing enough to combat the impact that we have on our environment.

A lot needs to change but across the whole customer chain. Exhibitors need to be more demanding of their stand builders and stand builders in turn need to be more demanding of organisers. We’re quite aware of the impact that the industry has and try do make a small change (and it is small) by planting trees to offset the carbon produced in making a stand. It does feel somewhat arbitrary though and our commitment this year will be to look at how we can contribute even more to sustainable exhibiting.

2 replies
  1. Karen Deighton
    Karen Deighton says:

    Great piece Ellen.
    I agree all sectors should be looking at their carbon footprints and I expect in time government will start to impose regulations to make this possible.
    It’s already started with cars, what’s next?
    Thanks for sharing this.

    • Ellen Stokes
      Ellen Stokes says:

      Thanks Karen!

      I think they should but as mentioned in the seminar, at the moment, there is no strong commercial interest in being sustainable. And as one of the panellists pointed out, we should change the attitude from ‘this is going to cost us’ to ‘what win-win scenario can we make from this?’

      It’s certainly needs to change!

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