Despite a 9 per cent increase on last year’s attendance figures, the addition of the inaugural UK Venue Show failed to attract the 5,000 anticipated visitors to this year’s two-day Event Production Show.

Ocean Media, the organiser for the two shows, held concurrently at London Olympia on 1-2 February, reported a total visitor number of 3,946, up from last year’s Event Production Show figure of 3,612.

Exhbition director for the UK Venue Show, Tanya Cohen, said: "The UK Venue Show was launched due to industry demand for a focused venues exhibition for the corporate events industry. The event attracts a targeted audience whose events tend to be on a much larger scale and more diverse than the smaller meetings and conferences. There was good strong representation of buyers from corporates and agencies with budgets in excess of £1m; I therefore think it would be fair to say that the value of one enquiry at the UK Venue Show has the potential to be up to ten times more than an enquiry at other more generalist exhibitions."

Although visitor numbers were lower than initially expected, a positive response came from some exhibitors. Phil Ion, director at exhibitor Core Lighting, said: “We have been very impressed at the quality of the leads. We shared our stand with Whitelight and met a range of visitors from owner managers to representatives of multinationals and corporates.”