Major trade shows on course despite blasts
PLANS for two major trade shows remain in place despite the series of blasts in provinces south of Bangkok that rocked the country recently.
Impact Exhibition Management Co and Bangkok Exhibition Services (BES) Co have confirmed that they will go ahead with events scheduled for this month and September.
Will Yunfei Wu, project manager of Impact’s “RetailEX ASEAN 2016”, said the event would go ahead as planned from August 25-27.
He said more than 6,000 exhibitors and guests involved in retail from Thailand and other countries such as China, Singapore and South Korea had confirmed their attendance at the event, which is expected to see business deals worth more than Bt1 billion.
Loy Joon How, general manager of Impact, said it would collaborate with foreign partners Globe International Events Consultancy, C-Star by Messe Duesseldorf (Shanghai) and K Shop by Korea International Exhibition Center (Kintex) to host RetailEX Asean.
Meanwhile, BES said its “Food & Hotel Thailand” event would take place from September 7 to 10 at Bangkok International Trade & Exhibition Centre (Bitec). Justin Pau, general manager of BES, said all of the exhibitors that had booked space at the event had reconfirmed their participation. “It seems that everyone understands [the] situation in Thailand and no one [has] cancelled plans. They believe this will be a short-term issue,” he said.
Pau said the tourism and hotel businesses remained important sectors driving the economy. BES also believes the country will be able to reach its arrival target of 33 million this year. He said Thailand’s retailers this year planned to expand their retail space by 17 per cent from 2015. Moreover, the combined value of retail sales in Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines is expected to reach US$1.36 trillion (Bt47 trillion) by 2018.
This, together with the other rapidly developing economies of Southeast Asia, presents a highly lucrative and one of the fastest-growing regional retail markets of the world for equipment, service and technology providers of the retail industry to expand their businesses.
BES expects more than 350 local and foreign companies to attend Food & Hotel Thailand and attract more than 30,000 visitors as well as generate income of Bt4 billion.
