AND GETS A NEW OPERATIONS TEAM. FIRST GOAL: INCREASE AND REFINE SELECTION OF HOSTED BUYERS
While the TTG Incontri team takes over the management of BTC, the restyling of the logo, with the payoff “Italy’s events exhibition”, highlights the show’s drive to bring together conferences, marketing and tourism, and its focus on Italy. A network of consultants will contribute to bring 20% more hosted buyers, focusing on top-spending corporate sectors and agencies with large business volumes.
BTC, the trade show for the events, meetings, conference and incentive travel industry that will take place at the Fiera di Rimini Exhibition Centre on 30 June-1 July 2011, has restyled its logo and mission.The new payoff describes BTC as “Italy’s events exhibition”. It thereby expresses both the significant presence of Italian suppliers, visitors and hosted buyers (BTC is the show for those wishing to buy Italy and those wishing to meet Italian buyers), and the objective of involving all the players of a multi-faceted industry.
These include professional congress organisers, marketing managers, incentive specialists, meeting managers, communication, travel, advertising and PR agencies, DMCs, trainers, tour operators and below-the-line experts, coming from different backgrounds but united by the fact that they organise occasions that bring people together. “The complementary nature of these worlds, which can broadly be identified as those coming from conference organisation and those with a marketing and communication background, is the key to guaranteeing a prosperous future to the industry. Our ambition is to make BTC a great opportunity for the entire community to come together to do business, share knowledge and get top professional education” says Gabriella Ghigi, BTC exhibition manager.
“We therefore want to involve, in an increasingly significant role and in partnership with specific associations and media groups, those marketing, communication and advertising professionals who have come into the events market in the last few years: at BTC, they would meet suppliers and buyers and, if interested, they could gain a deeper knowledge of events organisation and share their expertise on communication”.
Meanwhile, with Gabriella Ghigi at the helm, the operations and sales teams of TTG Incontri, Italy’s leading tourism trade show (with more than 42,000 visitors and 2,400 exhibitor companies from 100 countries) have taken over the operational management of BTC. The first team is led by Antonio Dell’Aquilano, head of the events division of TTG Italia, and the second by Gloria Armiri, head of sales.
“The organisational structure of TTG Incontri has a proven track record in managing an exhibition that is much larger and more complex than BTC, and I therefore believe that the contribution of such a team can only make BTC run more smoothly and effectively from an operational point of view”, comments Paolo Audino, CEO of Exmedia (the company behind BTC) and TTG Italia (which organises TTG Incontri). “Also for sales, with the internal reorganisation that last summer saw the arrival of Gloria Armiri as head of the division, the interaction between the two shows will generate significant synergies from which exhibitors will be able to benefit”.
Gabriella Ghigi will take on the increasingly strategic roles of liaising with the events sector, designing content, coordinating the operations and sales teams and managing the Hosted Buyer Programme, which will be expanded.“We are finalising agreements with Italian and European consultants, with associations from within and outside the industry, to help us identify and select relevant hosted buyers that never attended BTC before”, explains Gabriella Ghigi.
“It is still too early to name names”, says Gabriella Ghigi, “but the objective is to bring 20% more hosted buyers to BTC than in 2010 (when they numbered 300): BTC wants to place itself at the centre of a market comprising players from different business sectors, and it is therefore crucial that demand, and therefore the business opportunities that the show offers, reflects this expansion”.
