Words: Ashley Rigg
Published: 3rd November 2009
Opinion divided on Property Investor Show & OPP Live
Industry opinion appears to be divided on last week’s Property Investor Show and OPP Live which took place at London’s Excel Centre last week.
According to the organizers, although numbers were down on last year, the show attracted nearly 6000 visitors and 186 exhibitors. Nick Clark, managing director of Property Investor Media believes the quality of the visitors was up on previous years with less “timewasters” visiting the show.
“Investors were a fair way down the decision making process and searching for information to make their final purchase decision. Exhibitors have so far reported that the quality of leads was high with many reporting as many as 40 to 50 per day” he says.
Exhibitor Lindsay Hopkins, joint managing director of Trafalgar Square Overseas agrees: “During the show, I was impressed with the seriousness of the visitors and with a focus on quality rather than quantity, we still secured up to 50 leads per day” she says.
Not everyone is as positive. Exhibitor Richard McEnery of Spanish agent Apropertys questions the number of serious buyers who attended the show: “From a business-to-business perspective it was great show but from an investor perspective it was disastrous” he says. However, McEnery believes the show’s attendance reflects the difficult nature of the market. “Investors did not seem to be interested in Spain, I think the country is taboo at the moment”.
Dave Mason, Managing Director for the ROPUK Network, who represented developer Alpha Panareti, agrees that the show was better for networking than for recruiting investors. “It is difficult to gauge how useful it was from an investor perspective, it certainly wasn’t a useless exercise but the main benefit was catching up with and meeting new trade contacts” he says.
Overseas over-represented?
The editorial team at Landlord Expert make an interesting point.
They argue that traditionally the majority of investors attending the show are looking at UK investment opportunities and this year the show was over-represented by overseas and trade exhibitors. It’s an interesting argument and may be one reason why the show did not meet the expectations of some exhibitors.
My personal opinion is that the organizers did a good job in a very tough market. The seminars were interesting and the attendance was good given the circumstances. However, although I can see the benefits, I think the jury is still out on whether a combined trade and consumer show works as an effective marketing platform. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.
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User Comments
I think the question that should be asked is what client/s this show and others are targeting! and why the organizers are unwilling to create separate areas for different types of product.
We were offered space at a very good price per m2 but as usual the organizers wanted to mix high end investment with low end etc and were very reluctant to tell us what/who would be on the stand next to us.
For this reason we gave the show a miss.
Derek Charles Denhm,
Monde Exclusive Homes
Over the last two years, traffic has been down at every show we've attended. What has been consistent, and very evident at this year's show, was the quality of the prospect. We met with very qualified individuals and found the investor side of the show to be great. While you typically have to initiate the conversation with the investor after the show, we've seen quite a reversal. A number of the investors contacted us immediately after the show for more information and we are looking forward to writing contracts this week. Quality over quantity is what we seek and feel we achieved at the show.
Carla Rayman,
Prudential Palms Realty, Sarasota, Florida
We exhibited as UltraIT.net, looking for trade prospect for our online property agents software and website products, We previously exhibited at the first two OPP live shows and found that this years show was a watered down version or the originals, exhibitors were made up of really anybody who wanted to rent a stand, the show was a mis-match of exhibitors. and the majority of visitors were single property landlords, which was not what we were led to believe would be attending.
Glenn Board,
UltraIT.net
I have participated at OPP on 2 previous occaisions when it was a purely b2b event. With the introduction of consumers also visiting we decided that the event was not targetting our requirements.
In my opinion the Industry needs an event where companies such as ours from Russia, can meet and network.
Kim Waddoup,
aiGroup
