When organizers of NACE surveyed attendees and exhibitors about possible locations for the next few events after the show moved from Las Vegas to Orlando, one city was top of mind for many of them: New Orleans. The NACE conference begins today and the three-day exhibit begins tomorrow.Like this article? Sign up to receive our weekly news blasts here.
In addition to a relatively central location and an abundance of food and fun for attendees to take in after hours, there was another appeal: many attendees had not visited the city since Hurricane Katrina devastated the region back in 2005. According to Kelly Schulz, vice president of communications and public relations at the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau, they will be pleasantly surprised.
"The city has changed for the better," Schulz said. "The thing visitors have consistently told us since Katrina is that the experience of coming here is better than ever before."
New Orleans depends heavily on tourism and convention business, which generated more than $5 billion in revenues last year, so the city is especially welcoming to shows like NACE. According to Schulz, a convention the size of NACE generates roughly $5.8 million in economic impact for the city, or about $1,176 per person.
When the original decision was made to separate NACE from other industry events, and then change the location, there were questions about the impact on attendance and exhibitions. Rotating NACE's location has, so far, been a success says Ron Pyle, Automotive Service Association president.
"We had rotated the show in the past, and when we were thinking through the new strategy, we recognized that we needed a regional audience again," Pyle said. "There was a traveling audience that would always show up, but we did not get a great deal of local market support. In Orlando, we had a drive-in audience."
Pyle says the show's performance in Orlando last year was gratifying. "Going to Orlando was a bit of a no- brainer, because we always had good results in the past there. More importantly, we had folks attend who had not been to NACE in a while, and we had good local traffic," Pyle said.
The selection of the next show site would be trickier, but Pyle says he was pleased when New Orleans ranked high on the list of potential sites. "As soon as we started mentioning New Orleans, folks expressed interest, and many of them had not been there in quite a while," Pyle said.
Attendees and exhibitors who haven't been to The Big Easy since the pre-Katrina days will reap the benefits of the $300 million in improvements made to the convention center since 2005, as well as hotels that have been renovated and updated significantly. And in a city known for its eateries, Schulz says that the options have expanded since 2005. "There are 1,300 restaurants open in New Orleans today; we only had 800 when Katrina hit," Schulz says.
For NACE participants bringing their families, or that plan to explore the city during the show, Schulz recommended the National World War II Museum (which was recently expanded), the Mardi Gras World museum next to the convention center, the various walking tours available, and the recently opened Audubon Insectarium.
The city also is preparing to host the Super Bowl next year, so improvements are continuing.
Pyle said he expects to build on the Orlando success in New Orleans, thanks to the loyalty of the traveling audience and new show elements like the MSO Symposium, the CARS Mechanical Management Symposium, and the Twenty 2.0 peer benchmarking program being launched at the show.
"We're adding some educational content that I really believe is going to draw the single shop operators and smaller MSOs that just want to get more sophisticated in their management techniques," Pyle said.
The show returns to Las Vegas in 2013, but the 2014 location is still up in the air, Pyle said.
