City focus
Rotterdam -
A Dutch Exhibitionist
Ramy Salameh sees exhibitions Ahoy in Holland’s
innovative art and design Valhalla
inety galleries, 15 film
projections and 30,000
visitors were involved
in Art Rotterdam Week
recently, which in terms of visitor
numbers is the largest exhibition held
at Van Nelle Design Factory, according
to the venue’s Teamleader Sales,
Rogier Swerissen. The former coffee,
tea and tobacco factory received its
UNESCO World Heritage status in
2014.
Rotterdam’s international profile
as a major tradeshow destination
has been boosted by a series of
developments in the pipeline,
designed to put the city on the radar
of major trade events and congresses,
that were previously unobtainable.
Art Rotterdam Week, considered
the ‘Valhalla for art, design and
architecture lovers’, spreads its
exhibition tentacles across the city,
through an eclectic mix of venues,
such as the Museum Boijmans Van
Beuningen and Kunsthal, within the
Museum Park.
Van Nelle has plans to expand into
the former factory’s ‘Distribution
Hall’ providing a new area for larger
events.
“We secured a three-year term
to host the De Betondag – National
Concrete Day and De Nationale
Staalbouwdag – National Steel
building day conferences from
autumn of 2019,” says Swerissen.
Rotterdam hopes to provide
an alternative to Amsterdam, but
securing the mega-events requires
venues with enough capacity to
run tradeshows and conventions
simultaneously, which has been a
sticking point.
Rotterdam Ahoy is one established
60
Issue 2 2019
venue, with big plans for a new
Rotterdam Ahoy Convention Centre
(RACC) to open in late 2020. Gert-Jan
van den Nieuwenhoff, Manager B2B
events at Rotterdam Ahoy, says: “We
are convinced that this new venue
will boost the number of exhibitions”.
RACC will feature the Netherlands’
largest auditorium, which can be
combined with the existing halls and
arena.
Two of Ahoy’s own exhibitions
were in the Top 25 of Best Exhibitions
of the Netherlands: Europort and
Infratech. Ahoy’s largest exhibition
Europort, a maritime tradeshow, uses
approximately 40,000sqm, with more
than 1,000 exhibitors and 35,000
visitors. Nieuwenhoff says: “Ahoy’s
largest shows cover the complete
venue inclusive of our arena (cap
16,000) and there are shows that need
extra capacity”.
The new RACC cannot come quickly
Above:
Van Nelle
Fabriek
team in
front of
the Design
Factory
building
enough and Catherine Kalamidas of
Rotterdam Partners CVB is confident
the Ahoy’s new developments will
help her team pursue some of the
largest tradeshows and congresses.
Maintenance NEXT, an expo for
the industrial maintenance world,
will take place at Ahoy in April
2019 and Pieter Das Bas, Exhibition
Manager, comments: “Our ambition
is to integrate EuroMaintenance
& Maintenance NEXT and create
the largest and most impactful
maintenance event in Europe”.
Development of the RACC was the
catalyst to persuade the organisers of
EuroMaintenance, which takes place
every two years to delay it until 2021:
“Normally the next edition should
take place in 2020, but we wanted to
combine the events once we knew
the RACC would be up and running,”
he adds.
Rotterdam also boasts a floating
pavilion event venue, consisting
of three interlinked spheres/ halls
spread over 560sqm, which has
paved the way for more water based
innovations, such as the recycled
floating park, made out of plastics
collected from the Port of Rotterdam.
Rotterdam was also chosen to
be the European seat of Boston’s
Cambridge Innovation Centre and
the home of the UN Global Centre of
Excellence for Climate Adaptation,
thus a knowledge base in the area of
global warming. The city’s world-
leading knowledge clusters include
logistics and mobility, clean tech, agri-
food and ‘SmartIndustry’, all grist to
Kalamidas’ claim that, “Our heritage
is to be innovative”.
The exhibition industry can work
provided there are tools Ahoy.
w w w.exhibitionworld.co.uk