SIBS Wash Up So Far
The carnival is over and all that remains is to clean up and pull down the diaplays, and while numbers were certainly down on last year, the BIA NSW is hoping critics and the broader boating community will look beyond attendance figures to the sales and leads generated by SIBS 2008.
'BIA of NSW marketing and event manager, Domenic Genua.'
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Domenic Genua, event organizer, recovering from a late night dedicated to the pull-down of the 41st annual SIBS, said he is proud and pleased with feedback from exhibitors.
'Most exhibitors had realistic expectations for this year's Boat Show. Despite economic circumstances, we put our best foot forward and showed strength as an industry.'
During the show, Genua was asked to draw the winner of a prize in a competition run by a dealer and noticed that there were a lot of entries in the barrel.
'Now I don't know if they were a lot of big boats sold, or a lot of smaller boats, or a mix of boats, accessories and other things, but he seemed to have a lot of names in that container, which I took as a good sign.
'It's a great barometer of interest in his products and hopefully for him, excellent return on investment.'
Genua urged people not to use visitation as a guide to the health of the industry, but to consider sales and feedback from exhibitors, which he said will be available in the next day or so as figures are calculated.
Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Cumm.
2007 #'s 8695 11435 22075 23962 66166
2008 #'s 7249 10613 18753 20786 57401
Diff # -1446 -822 -3322 -3176 -8765
% -16.6% -7.2% -15.0% -13.3% -13.0%
Regarding the comments that given the challenging economic times, the BIA NSW should give exhibitors a break and lower prices, Genua is adamant: 'It won't happen'.
'We have a $4m overhead for this show, including million dollar hall hire. It's a million and a half to build marina. Exhibitors know before they arrive that these are the costs. They need to make the commercial decisions. I cannot control the costs of the show.'
He continues: 'It's a true cost. We are not running this to make a killing out of the exhibitors. We had 278 exhibitors this year and most of them are members, if not here then in other states. We have over 600 members. The balance who don't exhibit wouldn't appreciate funding those who do exhibit.'
More stats and figures later today at www.marinebusinessnews.com
by Jeni Bone 
swansea /newcastle, NSW
