A renewed sense of energy and enthusiasm at this year’s Duty Free & Travel Retail Summit of the Americas was palpable.

IAADFS and ASUTIL are expecting ‘flat’ visitor numbers when the totals for this week’s Duty Free & Travel Retail Summit of the Americas are finalised.

Updating TRBusiness today, IAADFS President and CEO Michael Payne revealed the event at the Hyatt Regency Orlando in Florida (24-27 March) drew *1,833 registered visitors on the first two working days (25-26 March), correct as of close of play on Tuesday 26 March.

As it currently stands, that represents an approximate 1.5% fall in visitors based on last year’s 1,860 total for the same period [Just under 1,900 in total over the three-day period].

The associations expect to bolster the 1,833 figure on account of the final day’s trading, although it remains to be seen whether the gap with total visitors can narrow when the audited figures are released.

BUYERS DOWN

The number of buyers totalled just over 400, which TRBusiness estimates has dropped anywhere between 4-9% based on last year’s 440.

Speaking during the trade show’s closing press conference yesterday, Payne mentioned that non-member buyer and non-member supplier numbers were up, but further details on the split out was not immediately available.

Payne called the close result in visitor numbers ‘huge’, given the challenges facing the Latin American economy, the climate of industry mergers and consolidations and added distractions such as the Spring Break holiday.

Left to right: Michael Payne, President and CEO, IAADFS and José Luis Donagaray, Secretary-General, ASUTIL host a debrief of the trade show among members of the travel retail press.

He said that a decrease in the size of the new exhibition area by approximately 10,000sq ft and the resultant effect on the space available to exhibitors is another likely reason for lower registered visitors.

“I was not expecting it to go quite as well, but you don’t want to see flat numbers,” Payne said.

“There are some things we can do differently; there are some companies that were missing that we thought we were going to get this year that was disappointing and we need to fix that.

“The Hyatt doesn’t quite have the back of house facilities for moving freight in and out like the Marriott, so the timing is something we need to work on, but I think the hotel has done a good job.

“The survey will give us some good feedback; the energy and response has been good and it has exceeded my expectations.”

ASUTIL Secretary-General José Luis Donagaray added: “People are satisfied with the new venue and comments on the environment and facilities are appreciated.

“The floorplan was better and more integrated. People outside the trade market said they had good booths and a lot of people [visiting]. There are always things to change and to work on.”

Despite a more positive mood in and around the trade show this year – sentiments echoed to TRBusiness by suppliers and retailers alike – both associations recognised there is still a lot of work to be done to improve an event that has faced pressure to change its approach for a number of years.

Separately, discussion over a potential integration with the Frontier Duty Free Association Convention as previously reported appears to have been ruled out altogether. TRBusiness understands this has much to do with the success of its new convention format.

Five or six potential Brazilian border store operators attended the event, which Donagaray praised as good profile raising ahead of what will be a significant breakthrough in Latin American duty free [click here for further background on the Brazilian border shops opportunity].

Under current terms, the Summit of the Americas is contracted to remain at the Hyatt Regency until 2020 with next year’s event scheduling tweaked slightly so the traditional opening cocktail begin on the Monday.

CONFERENCE SESSIONS ‘WELL RECEIVED’

The general consensus was that delegates seemed to favour the quality of the revamped three-day conference programme.

However, questions remain over its timings and whether a third day couldn’t be appropriately consolidated into two days in a way that doesn’t do detriment to delegates’ meeting time.

While attendance numbers for the sessions were not available during the media briefing, Donagaray confirmed conference attendees dropped by 30% on the second day.

“Overall for me, the quality was very good,” he said. “We took on a lot of topics: millennials, airport aviation, economics and panels. The people are pleased but on the last day – as was at the ASUTIL show – we lost people but people really used the information for their business plans.”

One suggestion was pushing forward the start of the sessions to 8:00am in the morning.

Next year’s Summit of the Americas returns to the Hyatt Regency in Orlando, 30 March – 2 April.

For coverage from the conference, click below links.

Day one

Day two

Day three