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TO RUSSIA WITH AN EXHIBITION RUSSIA’S MEETINGS INDUSTRY HAS RECOVERED FROM THE RECENT YEARS’ RECESSION. MARKET PARTICIPANTS NOTE THAT THE EXHIBITION VENUES EXPERIENCED AN 8% GROWTH IN 2013. IN ADDITION, RUSSIA SAW GREATER NUMBERS OF FOREIGN PARTICIPANTS. EXPERTS REASSURE THAT ALL OF THIS IS AN INDICATION THAT THE WORLD IS BECOMING MORE INTERESTED IN RUSSIA AS A MAJOR EXHIBITION DESTINATION.
IN DECEMBER 2013 St. Petersburg hosted the Russian Union of Exhibitions and Fairs (RUEF) meeting held to hear reports and elect new officials. At the meeting, attendees reviewed the Union’s performance, evaluated the Russian meetings industry and compiled a forecast for the next three years. RUEF members maintain that Russia’s conventions and exhibitions industry has recovered from the period of stagnation associated with the global economic recession and that the industry’s current rate of development is far ahead of many other industrial and economic industries. Over recent years, Russia’s exhibition space has grown by 22 %, on average the total number of foreign exhibition and convention attendees
across the country has increased by nearly 1.5 times, and the number of Russia’s exhibits experienced a 15 % growth. “Over the next three years, it is crucial to improve the material and technological base, support commodity producers, develop information technologies, and elaborate concepts to develop the convention and exhibition activity,” says RUEF President Sergey Alekseev. “Currently there are over 5,200 people employed in the Russian industry, of whom 1,581 are directly involved in organising exhibitions. Right now special attention should be devoted to staff training.”
60 EXPO BUSINESS REVIEW ЯНВАРЬ-ФЕВРАЛЬ МАЙ-ИЮНЬ 2013 2014 www.expobr.ru www.expobr.ru
THE NORTHERN CAPITAL FOR THE MEETINGS INDUSTRY “We often talk at exhibitions and congresses about the problems of the core industries, of small and medium-sized businesses. Millions of specialists, hundreds of thousands of companies and over 140,000 exhibitors operate in our industry. The exhibition and congress sector has great capacity for innovation,” says Serguei Trofimov, RESTEC Group president. “When it comes to innovation, people often have in mind manufacturing and nanotechnology, and hardly anyone addresses the problem of innova-