How does UFI help its members?

Next week I have been invited on a podcast to defend the role of associations and the value they provide to members. It is a question that should be asked by any organisation before blindly handing over membership dues, but I am still saddened that it is a message that we have not got across clearly enough sometimes either. But this week there was a good example which I'd like to share with you.

On Wednesday I was honoured to speak at a conference organised by Zagreb Fair which jointly marked their 110th anniversary, and Global Exhibitions Day.

I have never visited the Croatian capital before, home to almost 1/4 of its 4m population, and was really impressed by its beauty and architecture. A mixture of styles and influences owing to its interesting history, no wonder the home of Nicolas Tesla is a popular tourist destination.

Zagreb Fair itself was founded in 1909 in the city centre, and became a founding member of UFI 16 years later in 1925. In the mid-50s land across the Sava River was designated New Zagreb and there the new Fair was located in 110 hectares of space. The Fair occupy the same buildings today which are in need of a lot of investment to upgrade the facilities and services required of modern events.

The Fair, which is owned by the city, has had a really difficult time in the last few years, having to justify their very existence so full credit to the current management team led by Dina Tomsic who have turned things around, injected new life and new energy to the organisation and posted a profit for the first time in 11 years.

The Fair buildings are listed, so Dina and the team would like to build a new multi-purpose exhibition and congress facility elsewhere on the property, and have been seeking support from the government & authorities to back this investment. So the conference they organised on Wednesday was a good opportunity to gather the Mayor of Zagreb Milan Bandic and representatives of the Prime Ministers office, Ministry of Economy, Chambers of Commerce and colleagues from the exhibition industry across Croatia and argue the case for this new venue.

This is where UFI comes in. Our recent Global Economic Impact study has data which is exactly what politicians and government and officials need to hear, which proves the importance of our industry - the total economic impact of exhibitions globally is €167 billion annually, meaning the exhibition industry is larger than the machine tool or medical equipment industries.

Also ranked as a GDP, it would be the 56th largest economy in the world.

But while these figures are impressive and give an overall picture of the importance (we are working on individual country data, starting with the UK), perhaps more relevant in this case was the data we have showing the economic impact per exhibiting company, or per sqm of indoor exhibition space in your venue.

Zagreb Fair can use these figures in their calculations of their proposed new venue (which will currently is I believe around 10,000 sqm of indoor exhibition space) and make a solid business case to the city and government.

So there is a long way to go. The Mayor publicly gave his backing for the project with a timeline for its completion, so we wish Dina and all the team at Zagreb Fair the very best, and will commit to offering any support we can in future meetings or discussions. They were the hosts of the UFI Congress in 1959, 1979 and again in 2009. Lets hope that in 2029 we will be back again in their new venue!