Comdex, Cowboys, Clothiers Make Vegas Convention King
This is Monster Week for the city’s burgeoning convention business, and everyone in town--from carpet layers and caterers to cabdrivers and topless dancers--is braced for the bittersweet onslaught.
More than 200,000 businesspeople will be coursing up and down the Strip beginning today, testing--and proving--Sin City’s ability to play host to corporate America.
Most of them will be here for Comdex, the most-attended trade show in America, to celebrate developments in the world of information technology. But more typical of the convention crowds that have redefined Las Vegas in recent years are 4,200 people in the industrial fastener trade who will gather at a Strip resort to unveil the latest in bolts, nuts and screws.
The two shows testify to how Las Vegas, once eschewed as too tawdry a place to conduct legitimate business, has matured in hosting conventions and trade shows.
“Las Vegas is the capital of the mega-trade-show market,” said Michael Hughes, director of research for Trade Show Week Magazine. Of the 200 largest trade shows in the land, 34 are held here. Chicago is a distant second with 23, according to the magazine’s annual survey.
Comdex is the biggest show of all, so big that it drives up hotel rates twofold or threefold. Restaurants close for private parties. And the Riviera Hotel’s nude revue is planning a show just for the computer geeks: “Crazy Girls Special Comdex Edition.”
Comdex general manager Bill Sell of Key3Media, the show’s owner, said it’s not unlike building a city in a week to accommodate 2,100 exhibiting companies and 200,000 attendees.
Among the greatest challenges: providing phone service to all the booths, some with up to 40 lines--and establishing a high-speed Internet network that not only links exhibitors to their home offices but also to the other Comdex venues in town. Then there’s security, food concessions, electricity, carpeting, banners, audiovisual displays and 200 shuttle buses to move people around town.
For all the business this convention brings to town, feelings here are decidedly mixed. Cabdrivers, for example, complain about stuffed vehicles and lousy tips. “Those guys come to town with one shirt and one $20 bill, and they don’t change either,” goes the tired refrain.
And at Cheetahs, a topless nightclub where extra dancers are needed for the convention, “the Comdex guys don’t want to pay $20 for a lap dance unless they get a free pen,” a manager said.
Altogether, nearly 4,000 conventions are staged in Las Vegas annually. Some attract only a few hundred people--such as last week’s meeting of the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine and next month’s North American Open Chess Tournament.
But some conventions and trade shows sweep across the entire city. The Consumer Electronics Show in January attracts about 100,000 people; the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Assn.’s Super Show, two weeks later, draws 90,000. In February comes the MAGIC (Men’s Apparel Guild in California) Show with 90,000 participants. Also that month will be 70,000 people pouring in for the World of Concrete Exposition.
Add to that all the other conventions and shows, including ones for the television, automotive and construction trades, and the ever-popular gatherings of funeral directors and rodeo cowboys--who together are said to be the biggest party animals of all--and altogether, nearly 4 million people come here annually to show and tell.
Their numbers account for about 14% of all the people who come to Las Vegas, and typically they spend 50% to 100% more on non-gambling activities than the average tourist--largely because they put it on the company expense account.
It hasn’t always been easy attracting the convention business to Las Vegas, said Manny Cortez, president of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.
“The image of Las Vegas 25 years ago was of Bugsy Siegel and glitz . . . not the kind of image that certain businesses wanted to leave with their customers if they held a convention here,” Cortez said. “But today that image is pretty much gone. We enjoy a reputation as a world-class destination where people can conduct business.”
That’s one reason Mike McGuire, who publishes magazines for the fastener industry and produces conventions for the trade, launched his Las Vegas show four years ago. It is now more popular than a longer-running show he holds in Columbus, Ohio.
“We had a little hesitancy going to Las Vegas, because of its reputation,” he said. “We figured our people would show up, duck their heads in and then go out and gamble.”
That didn’t happen, however, and with attendance growing he has returned to Las Vegas ever since.
The convention business has exploded for various reasons, a kind of growth-begat-growth scenario. As gambling has become commonplace around the nation, Las Vegas stretched its entertainment, dining and resort offerings to remain competitive.
Meanwhile, the number of hotel rooms in Las Vegas has increased to more than 120,000--enough to accommodate even the busiest convention weeks--and airlines have expanded their relatively cheap flights into McCarran International Airport.
At the same time, Clark County’s quasi-public convention agency has continuously expanded its exhibit hall to 1.9 million square feet--and is now building a new, 1.2-million-square-foot hall next door. Hotels have their own convention facilities as well, for their own bookings or as overflow for the huge shows. (Comdex will occupy the convention center as well as the private Sands Expo and three other hotels.)
An entire industry serving the convention business has developed in Las Vegas, ranging from general contractors that build exhibit booths to talent and modeling agencies that staff parties and sales booths.
For one Comdex client that promised its software customers “no monkey business,” agency owner Jaki Baskow lined up monkeys in diapers to prance around an outdoor restaurant reception. And when another Comdex client wanted an attention-grabber at its booth, she lined up a man who learned the company’s spiel--and delivered it while balanced on a tightrope.
She can also deliver 480 Elvis impersonators--including twin, 400-pound Elvi--as she did once for a Teamsters convention, and more beautiful women than you can shake a boa feather at.
“We go with understated sexy,” she said. “Being too sexy is tasteless. You don’t want to intimidate women or conservative men.”
The challenge in the convention business, said Daryl Clove, local head of GES Exhibition Services, is to move out an outgoing convention and set up the next one in just a few days.
Clove said he had 1 1/2 days to dismantle a MAGIC clothing show--with more than 10 million pounds of exhibit freight--and then, in two days, set up the next convention for the ski industry. To do the job he hired 2,000 tradesmen, working around the clock.
“I’m not tossing and turning with anxiety at 3 in the morning, because we’re all at the convention center, working,” Clove said. “But it creates an adrenaline rush that you get hooked on.”
From monkeys and Elvi to exhibit construction and dining (the Harley-Davidson Cafe estimates that 25% of its business is from trade shows), the convention business pumps about $4 billion into the local economy.
So is Las Vegas ready to host a national political convention and its 50,000 attendees? Nope, said Cortez.
The organizing committee would want to take over the convention facility for six months to prepare for it, “and they’d displace some of our major conventions,” he said. “We don’t want to lose the revenue.”
Heading to Las Vegas
Heading to Las Vegas
Some of the conventions and trade shows to be held in Las Vegas, with their dates and expected attendance:
Meeting Date Attendance
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National Potato Council Nov. 30-Dec.2 600 Pacific Seed Assn. Jan. 12-14 70 Creative Painting Show Feb. 4-9 7,000 Calif. Robbery Investigators Assn. Feb. 5-9 500 American Mushroom Institute Feb. 18-22 450 Western Shoe Assn. Feb. 23-27 30,000 Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy March 11-13 300 National Assn. of Pizza Operators March 21-23 12,500 Society of Permanent Cosmetic Professionals March 24-26 500 National Assn. of Broadcasters April 23-26 125,000 International Congress of Oral Implantologists May 29-June 4 800 International Parking Institute June 4-6 2,000 International Trucking Show June 27-29 32,000 Shriners July 8-13 25,000 American Assn. of Spinal Cord Injury Nurses Aug. 31-Sept. 9 1,500 National Beer Wholesalers Assn. Sept. 9-12 3,200 American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists Nov. 8-10 150
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* COMDEX BEGINS
More than 2,000 exhibitors will show off their new electronic gizmos. C1
