With DEMA Show locked in for Orlando in 2025, New Orleans in 2026, Las Vegas in 2027, Orlando in 2028 and New Orleans in 2029, Tom Ingram, president and CEO of the Diving Equipment and Marketing Association says they’re looking at the possibility of holding it in other venues after that.
“We’ll keep looking around and see what we got, but we have a series of criteria that we use that talks about the hotel rooms that we need and the convention center space and the meeting space and all of those things,” Ingram said during his annual chat with DeeperBlue.com during the show. “So it’s a process for us, which is why we try to do it that far out in advance.”
“The board asked us to take a look at alternative cities starting in [20]30, although we may not go to an alternative city,” he said, adding:
“We’ve still got the three-city rotation that we’re doing — Las Vegas, Orlando, New Orleans. We have a DEMA Show Committee that actually looks at all of the criteria that that have been established by the board and they’re gonna do that again, starting this year. Typically, we try to do three to five years out and in the past couple of years, we’ve been looking at five years out. And so if you think about it, 2025, it’s only five years out from 2030. So, we’re looking.”
While Ingram said DEMA loves all three of the cities the show is scheduled for the next half-decade, and they are all in the top 10 convention cities in the US:
“One of the things that’s kind of interesting about Las Vegas is that one of the reasons we were here during this time frame is because it’s always been the very slowest week in Las Vegas, and so we take advantage of that and try to keep the hotel rates down and all that stuff. Plus, the members want the show in the fall. So it kind of fits in.”
That said, the Formula One race “has changed that because right now, right now they’re negotiating a 10-year agreement [with F1]. And if that’s the case, then we were not the biggest game in town anymore,” Ingram said with a chuckle.
‘Clobbered’ by inflation
Ingram noted how the diving industry “has been just clobbered by inflation. So I think it’s slowing things down, and then it’s been a stormy year too, so we’ve had a lot of folks that have gotten into trouble from hurricanes and other stuff that’s been going on.” He added:
“In fact, I was scared to death because this is the first time that that I can recall that we’ve actually had a tropical storm sitting over a group of our exhibitors in Belize and Honduras during the show. This is no good at all, but they’re here, so everything’s good there.”
Ingram said the DEMA board of directors was able to approve emergency funding for exhibitors from Belize and Honduras on the Sunday before the show, in case they needed it.
“We’re happy to do it just to help them to get here and get it taken care of.”
Attendance
As for attendance at the show, Ingram said:
“One of the things we always worry about if a major exhibitor decides not to come, whether it’s it’s gonna have an impact or not, and it really did not at all.”
The Formula One race was also a worry, according to Ingram.
“I think we’ve seen it some fall-off a little bit because of that, but I’m only down 200 people overall, so I’m pleased with that.”
One of the things that the organization measures is registered buyers, he said.
“It’s a tortuous process for people to go through to get to become a registered buyer, but those are the folks that the exhibitors really want to target. So, we do prequalify.“
The number of registered buyers was 18% in 2021, then rose slightly to 18.4% in 2022, and has stayed at that level ever since, he said.
“It’s gone up a little bit since ’21, but those are the people that we want, everybody wants a big crowd, but with a trade show, trade only, you’re really looking at the need to have the prequalified buyers and that’s one of the measurements that we use. But, you know, of course, like everybody, we like to see a big crowd on the floor.”
Consequently, Ingram is happy the number has at least remained flat.
“It’s flat when you compare it with 2023 in New Orleans. But it’s not going down at all, so we’re pleased with that.”
Ingram added that the show has seen some new exhibitors that are here this year that hadn’t been around for a while, and hopes some of the other exhibitors who decided to avoid Las Vegas due to the Formula One race will be back next year in Orlando.
Treasure hunt
One thing Ingram said will likely come back next year is the treasure hunt, which this year was dubbed the “Undersea Grand Prix.”
“We used to do treasure hunts all the time. it was scavenger hunts, pirate stuff. It’s been used in the past and it’s always successful. I said, ‘If you can’t fix it, feature it,’ so that’s why we did it as the Undersea Grand Prix. We’ll just try to make it as fun as we can.”
