Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Sly
Call me stupid... but I just spent a weekend in Phoenix basically for free. I paid the hotel room of course, but sponsors pretty much paid for everything else. There was food, drinks, parties, games, activities, seminars, give-aways, etc, etc, etc, etc, and I didn't pay one penny towards a registration fee. I'm not against businesses making money by any means, but what exactly are these registration fees going towards? Is there some huge hidden fee that AVN is charged by the United States Government that all the other shows get a "get out of jail free" card from?
|
I certainly won't call you stupid!
I don't have a full list of Internext costs to hand but, to name a few: the show has a huge contract with the hotel that includes lower room rates but makes the show liable for all rooms whether they're sold or not... this also includes fees for shutting hotel propreties off from the general public... the bars and restaurants and so on - it's kind of like a rental fee to rent an entire hotel; there's a seperate fee to rent the convention centre; there's a large insurance fee; temps are hired to run registration; a seperate company is hired to manage the online and on-site registration process; a decorator and labour are paid to deal with exhibits and signage etc; breakfast and lunch is included each day (which may be sponsored, but only in part because it's very steep); medics are paid to be on site incase of an emergency; there's a fee for setting up wireless coverage across the property; there's a strong marketing push, which costs money; there's also the overhead involved with running a trade show business... attorneys, salaries, health benefits, office space etc.
I guarantee I'm missing a lot, but there are indeed costs to do this sort of thing.