Exhibitions to Go Bigger

‘2011 Korea Industry Exhibition’ with more than 100,000 sq. meter exhibition space, the largest in Korean exhibition history, will be held at KINTEX.

Under the motto “the bigger, the better,” Korea International Exhibition Center (KINTEX) will see its second exhibition center, now under construction and scheduled to be completed by September 2011, raising its combined exhibition space to 108,761 sq. meters. With the expansion, KINTEX will rank fourth in Asia and 35th globally in terms of size to establish itself among of the ranks of globally recognized exhibition and convention centers.
The tentatively named 2011 Korea Industry Exhibition will be held for a four-day run from Sept. 28, 2011 in time for the expansion of KINTEX, combining the existing five exhibitions ― Korea Machinery Fair, the Seoul International Electric Fair, Seoul International Tool Exhibition, Korea Metal Week and Korea International Printing Machinery & Equipment Show.
Chung Man-ki, director general for trade at the Ministry of Knowledge Economy; Yoon Dong-sup, executive vice chairman of the Korea Association of Machinery Industry; Ko Hak-keun, executive vice chairman of Korea Electrical Manufacturers Association; Choi Yong-shik, chairman of the Korea Tools Industry Cooperative; Lee Hong-kyu, president of Korea Trade Fairs; Kim Chung-jin, president of Korea E&EX Inc.; Park Su-yong, chief of the Economy and Investment Office at the Gyeonggi Provincial Government; Goyang Vice Mayor Kim In-gyu; Kwak Dong-un, chief of the Marketing Division at KOTRA; and KINTEX President Han Joon-woo assembled at KINTEX on Dec. 9 and signed an agreement to jointly hold the 2011 Korea Industry Exhibition, integrating the five exhibitions. The participants also pledged to make the planned exhibition a success.
The forthcoming exhibition will be held in the all 10 exhibition halls of the first and the second exhibition centers, covering about 108,000 square meters in exhibition space, the largest one in Korean exhibition history.
Organizers expect the combined exhibition to attract about 645 corporate exhibitors from some 30 countries and about 5,500 foreign buyers. Negotiations or contracts on $22.54 billion worth of trade are expected to take place, establishing the exhibition as one of the world-class fairs and contributing to raising the nation’s capital goods’ competitiveness and national standing.
They estimate the direct economic effects the exhibition will bring about at $14 million. The figure is translated to approximately 17.5 billion won, equivalent to exporting 1,000 Korean-made, medium-sized passenger cars.
The so-called MICE industry, referring to Meeting, Incentive, Convention and Exhibition, has been picked up as one of the 17 new growth engines the government is striving to nourish.
The MICE industry can amount to being a tourism industry that creates highly added value. Figures released by the Korea Tourism Organization showed that MICE participants spent an average of $2,488 per head, 2.8 times higher than ordinary tourists. It translates that the amount of money three MICE participants spend is equivalent to the money needed to purchase a 1,500cc-class automobile. Since accommodation charges and convention participation fees are provided by visitors’ patronage organizations, travelers can afford to spend extra money while traveling.
As the MICE industry is a tourism industry that creates high profits, KINTEX has become the subject of keen attention from Korea and abroad.
KINTEX has established itself as Korea’s largest exhibition and convention center as it has become the venue of Korea’s “Big Seven” premier exhibitions, including the Seoul Motor Show, Korea Electronics Show, Korea Machinery Fair and Soul International Machine Tool Show. The exhibition center, currently covering 53,975 sq. meters, held 329 exhibitions and 1,354 conventions during the period between May 2005 and December 2008.
Given the fact that Korea faces difficulty in attracting large-size, world-class exhibitions, the nation is expected to attract such mega-size fairs as ITU Telecom World and ITMA in the years to come. KINTEX will also accommodate such auxiliary facilities as multipurpose event halls capable of accommodating more than 10,000 attendees in order to play leading roles in the domestic BT MICE (Business Travel, Meeting, Incentive, Convention, Exhibition) industry.
“A policy of making an exhibition center bigger pays off. Small-size consumer exhibitions and academic circles’ conventions are being held in exhibition centers in downtown Seoul and bigger exhibitions and conventions are moving into KINTEX,” KINTEX CEO Han Joon-woo said earlier.
Han expressed the hope that KINTEX would attract such international mega-exhibitions and conventions as the International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS), ITMA, the world’s largest textile machinery show, and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Korea’s Big Seven exhibitions have already been held in KINTEX with the scale of exhibitions going bigger, and when KINTEX’s planned second expansion is complete, all exhibitions and conventions will be held in a more successful manner, he said.
KINTEX will see its exhibition space double as the Gyeonggi provincial and the Goyang City municipal governments will complete the second exhibition center by 2011 in cooperation with the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA). The project will cost the two governments 120.4 billion won and KOTRA 18.3 billion won. The reason for the expansion is that KINTEX is still insufficient to accommodate exhibitions on an international scale.
KINTEX’s second exhibition center, with exhibition space of 54,000 sq. meters, the same size as the existing one, will be built on a lot of 743,000 sq. meters near the existing exhibition center. When the expansion project is completed, KINTEX is expected to establish itself as a full-blown exhibition center of an international scale with exhibition space of more than 100,000 sq. meters. nw

Representatives of exhibition organizers sign an agreement to jointly hold the tentatively named 2011 Korea Industry Exhibition at KINTEX in 2011, combining the existing five exhibitions, including Korea Machinery Fair on Dec. 9 at KINTEX.