developed relationships with the trade associationinvolved, which makes content planning and findingthe right target groups easier. A constant challenge,however, is to organise our own work as efficiently aspossible. Over the last two years, we have put a lot ofeffort into streamlining our internal processes andmaking all our back-office support operate as smoothlyas possible.Another challenge which we find very exciting is to findthe best possible ways for our face-to-face meetings tointeract with the digital meeting opportunities providednowadays. For example, we are looking into ways forvisitors to interact both with each other and with us toplan their visit. We cooperate with a company calledMatchmeeting providing such services, and we alsowork with social media such as Facebook.NorwayStig Nitter FossMD Norges Varemesse, LillestromThe biggest challenges to the Norwegian exhibitionindustry include the general decline in visitor numbersover the last decade, and the loss of the younggeneration of visitors. 2010 has been quite a difficultyear compared to 2009. Trade fairs are suffering fromthe recession but holding up.We are the only large hall owner in Norway andfinancially very sound. Due to the Norwegian marketsize we are quite dominant. About 40 to 50 per cent ofthe Norwegian market is in our premises. The value ofour shows is about ?50m per year.We organise 15 shows annually, both national andinternational. We have more organisers from outsidethe country compared with the rest of Scandinavia.Festivals are growing. We have to incorporate festivalthinking into our shows towards the general public.Exhibition World | Country profile17and $100m per year since several of the largeexhibitions are bi-annual. In short, you could say thatthe large ones are getting larger whereas some of thesmaller events struggle with declining numbers ofvisitors. The exhibition length hasn't changed duringthe last year. We have had one cancellation, a trade exhibitioncalled Scanlab. Our partner, the Swedish Labtechorganisation, decided to run the next event in 2012instead of 2011. There are two new and two old shows coming backto Stockholmsmässan. Both the motorcycle exhibitionPå Två Hjul ("On Two Wheels", a consumer show) andthe audiovisual exhibition LLB (a trade show) were heldat Stockholmsmässan some years ago and are nowcoming back to us, which we of course are verypleased with. A new exhibition is Spara & Placera ("Savings &Investments"), a consumer show focused on financialissues for families and individuals. We will launch thisexhibition in early October and it will runsimultaneously with two other consumer showsfocusing on interior design and children, respectively. We have found that this way of presenting parallelshows with different topics but related audiences isvery popular among our visitors. We recently extendedour venue by 10,000 square metres making it easier torun several parallel events.Another new exhibition is IPX India (InternationalPaper Exhibition), which is launched by our subsidiaryAdforum.The manufacturing industry and the exhibitionsconnected with this area were most affected, whereasthe exhibitions within interior design, leisure andconstruction have had a more positive development.For many of our exhibitions we maintain well-Norges VaremesseTHE MAGAZINE FOR THE GLOBAL EXHIBITION COMMUNITY WWW.EXHIBITION-WORLD.NET| October 2010|

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