The President’s Report
Looking to the future
ITCA President Stephen White explains the reasons behind the ITCA Trade Show moving to Hamburg and discusses the future course of the Association
STEPHEN WHITE ITCA president
Q. When did you seriously start to think about moving the Trade Show to Hamburg? ITCA as an Association started a dialogue with Reed Exhibitions several years ago when Aircraft Interiors started to include the onboard service element of travel. (In fact, I think I ran the first food forum to take place there and that must have been 11 or 12 years ago. Nina Harman from Food By Design was scheduled to organise it but she became sick and I was asked to run it for her). But the timing wasn’t right then and the members showed no interest in moving. I suppose things really started to change about three years ago.
What happened this year that led to your board making the decision to move now? ITCA Nice worked well but unfortunately it followed the same trend as the previous few years and we were some 25% down on sales over recent years. This business is all about critical mass and numbers. The rent and other overheads are fixed so without the numbers we were struggling. The reduced income added to our troubles and over the last few years the Association has made a loss. As I reported before - we disbanded the Trust to allow the Board to have control of our emergency fund and as the losses mounted we began to eat into that emergency fund. This clearly could not be allowed to continue as the very existence of the Association was at risk. It is the Board’s responsibility and mine as President to do everything we can to ensure the Association remains financially viable.
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www.onboardhospitality.com
Was the Nice show successful this year with the many changes you introduced? Yes, I was very happy with the way it all went and we had a lot of very positive comments but we were still down 25% on sales. I think it is obvious to anyone why this commercial decision had to be made. I made it my priority to speak with as many of our exhibitors as possible in Nice and many of them showed far more interest in the Hamburg show than we previously thought. With this in mind we calculated that we would
have continued to show a further reduction in sales for 2012/13. It was because of this and especially following discussions with the larger catering companies that we decided to see if
“I look forward to seeing you and all the team from OnBoard Hospitality at the World Travel Catering Expo incorporating ITCA in Hamburg next year”
the industry believed that a move to Hamburg was necessary. So we held a Strategic Workshop over a two day period that consisted of senior members from all over the world. We had full, open and frank discussions on the current position. We received a very strong message, in fact it was the overriding point and indeed confirmation that the ITCA European Trade Show should move to Hamburg as soon as possible.
So you approached Reed Exhibitions? As I said before we have always had a very good rapport with Reed Exhibitions but we discovered that they were going to launch a new initiative to include food and beverages as well as other on board products and services, called - ‘The World Travel Catering Expo’. It was clear that this was going to overlap exactly with our ITCA Trade show. It was therefore beneficial for all concerned to work together at this time.
How did Reed Exhibitions acquire the ITCA Trade Show? We are paying off the commitments and contracts that ITCA as an Association had committed to. ITCA will also receive an income for a period of time and will have a stand at the Hamburg event. ITCA will now concentrate on building a better Association for its members. The Board Meeting in September will concentrate on formulating new ideas for the Association and I am confident that we will be able to make the necessary changes needed to grow the Association and make it more meaningful.
What suddenly makes Hamburg a popular venue? Pressure on ITCA has been building for some time from some of the large global caterers – you will remember that they were nearly all absent from the Nice Trade Show although some of them did have a presence in hotels nearby. As I am sure everyone will understand, the space they used to take in the Trade Show contributed significantly to the financial success of the event and therefore ITCA’s bottom line. It also now appears that they were trying to influence other companies to also move to Hamburg and as I explained before, this loss of revenue could not be sustained. Some of the ITCA Board and I have had a number of high-level meetings over the last 14 months with representatives from the catering companies and they made it very clear that they wanted ITCA to move to Hamburg. We therefore agreed to withdraw from organising it for a period of time.
How has the move been received by the members? Apart from a number of early messages of congratulations from members things have been quiet. I have though had communications with several of the large catering companies. Even though they all agree that the move to Hamburg was a necessity and the preferred option they all have differing
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