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The Green Industry Yellow Pages (GIYP) and the Mid-Atlantic Nursery Trade Show (MANTS) are helping attendees for the upcoming industry event make the most of their trade show experience. By using the Online Trade Show Planner, available through GIYP and MANTS Web sites, attendees can make an interactive to-do list for the January 5 through 7 event.
Powered by GIYP, the virtual directory provides information for all of the show’s 960 exhibitors and more than 1,000 booths at the click of a mouse. Before heading to the Baltimore Convention Center on Jan. 5 for the trade show, attendees can log onto www.mants.com and click on the 2005 MANTS Directory icon to interactively search the show floor by company or product.
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From there, directory users can create a map that identifies which vendors the attendee wants to meet with, what plants and green goods they want to see, booth numbers and locations for those vendors and make notes to detail their booth visits.
“We have had a number of clients use the To-Do application successfully and a large amount of positive feedback from both attendees and trade show administrators,” says Steve Cissel, GIYP founder and CEO. “We recognized there was a gap between trade show attendees with specific needs and the exhibitors that would meet those needs but were amassed among hundreds of other exhibitors. Attendees could spend days at a single trade show and not visit all the exhibitors that could meet their needs.”
MANTS representative Vanessa Finney agrees. “We’ve maxed out our exhibit space on the trade show floor, so we’ve got 960 exhibiting companies taking up 300,000 square feet of exhibit space,” she says. “Many of our attendees may only be able to visit the trade show for one day and that’s a lot of ground to cover when you’ve only got limited time. We’re looking forward to seeing how the Online Trade Show Planner works to help attendees in those situations move through the space more easily and meet more of the vendors that can help them in their businesses, without having to wander the entire floor.”
With MANTS attendance holding strong at roughly 11,500 qualified buyers for the last few years, vendors also will benefit as more of those attendees use the Online Trade Show Planner, Cissel adds. “Exhibitors have never had a standard way to attract tradeshow visitors prior to, during and even after the trade show itself,” he notes. “This system provides a way for exhibitors to promote their products to attendees usinga medium that is available 24/7 and matches their offerings to customer needs.”
Nancy Akehurst, Executive Vice President of MANTS, notes that the Online Trade Show Directory worked well last year and they expect more attendees to use the search tool in advance to make their time more productive and efficient during trade show hours.
Additionally, Finney says last year’s Internet Café featured at MANTS and provided by GIYP was a success and she expects more people to take advantage of that feature this year, as well. “I think that as more people learn about and understand what the Internet Café and the Online Trade Show Planner can do for them, the better and more widely used they’ll become,” she says.
In keeping with the Web-based theme, anyone interested in attending MANTS this year can register online by visiting www.mants.com through Dec. 17. Advance online registrations or registrations sent via fax to 410/296-8288 by Dec. 17 will be only $10 per attendee. After that date, registration will be $15.
MANTS and GIYP both invite attendees to visit the Online Trade Show Planner before the show. However, attendees who don’t visit the Online Trade Show Planner in advance still have the opportunity to log onto the directory at MANTS by visiting the GIYP Internet Café located near the show’s concession stands. Free Internet access will be provided by GIYP for all MANTS attendees and exhibitors.
Look for the Online Trade Show Planner to be used at other upcoming industry events, such as the OFA Short Course, which will take place in July 2005. The directory for this event will be available a couple of months prior to the show dates.