A significant transformation of hotel industry exhibition NoVacancy was unveiled last month when it was relaunched by new owners National Media at the ICC Sydney.
Spanning 8,000m2 of space, the event was redesigned to place greater emphasis on the products and services of 160 vendors including hotels, hospitality providers and ancillary products to the hotel industry, rather than its past focus as a conference.
“Our goal in switching the event to exhibition format was to launch with 120 exhibitors and we beat that by 34% with 160 vendors and suppliers,” said Brad Langton, portfolio director for NoVacancy.
“Our attendance goal of 1,800 to 2,000 was also far surpassed with 3,387 hoteliers, speakers, media, vendors and industry suppliers attending across the two days,” he added.
Visitors were able to choose from more than 40 free-to-attend sessions with two of the four theatres utilising “silent disco” technology aimed at reducing noise clutter across the exhibition. To attract visitors, the speaking program was curated after more than “9,000 phone calls were made to as many different hotels, motels, service apartment groups, to understand what it is they are looking for,” Langton added.
“We could potentially double the size, but we want to grow in the right areas,” he said. “We won’t know until we’ve done a good digest of this year’s event. A lot of boxes have been ticked and feedback and sentiment has been exceptionally positive.”
NoVacancy returns to the ICC Sydney 24-25 July 2019.
