The Bay Area Convention And Exhibition Economy Under The Epidemic Situation: Can The Way Of Online Digitization Solve The "Urgent Need"?

In June 15th, the 127th Canton Fair held the "cloud opening" ceremony. Since the opening of the first Canton Fair in 1957, the Canton Fair has gradually become a shining card in Guangzhou during the 63 years.

This year's Guangzhou Guangzhou Trade Fair under the new crown pneumonia epidemic is the first trade fair held entirely in the form of Internet. About 2.6 000 Chinese exhibitors have brought 1 million 800 thousand new products in the world trade fair, which will be discussed with the hundreds of thousands of buyers in the world for 24 hours in 24 consecutive days. In the past, the sound booth of Pazhou Canton Fair was "quiet", and the online live room was hot.

The 50 virtual exhibition area, for 10 days, comes from the exhibitors' online gathering Hall of exhibitors from all over the world. The online venue is in full swing, and whether it can save the exhibition economy which has fallen into the "freezing point" has become the focus of attention.

Zhang Xiaoming, deputy director of the Institute of exhibition and brand communication, Zhejiang University, and Deputy Secretary General of the Zhejiang International Exhibition and Exhibition Association, Dr. Zhang Xiaoming, told reporters in the twenty-first Century economic report that although digital transformation has always been regarded as an important direction for the development of exhibition economy, online exhibitions can not effectively replace offline exhibitions in the short term. The method meets the needs of exhibitors and their audiences for the physical experience. Two, online exhibitions are relatively high investment and low economic benefits for small and medium-sized exhibition enterprises. Three, online exhibitions are hard to get through online and offline exhibition nodes.

Digital transformation is urgent.

The foreign trade industry has become the most seriously affected area under the epidemic. The epidemic speeds up the trend of digitalization of foreign trade, making the new foreign trade based on global interconnection necessary. According to the General Administration of customs, in the first quarter of this year, the total value of China's import and export trade declined by 6.4% over the first quarter of this year, but the cross-border e-commerce platform's import and export trade increased by 34.7%.

Against this background, the most important meaning of holding the Canton Fair known as "the barometer of foreign trade and the weathervane" is to solve the urgent need of foreign trade.

Since the outbreak of the outbreak, the global exhibition industry has almost completely stopped. Famous exhibitions such as Hannover industrial exhibition, Geneva exhibition and auto show have been postponed or cancelled. According to the European Federation of exhibition industry, the economic loss caused by the cancellation of the exhibition caused by the epidemic has reached 5 billion 800 million euros.

The domestic situation is also not optimistic. In addition to the Canton Fair, a number of exhibition items such as China's unattended retail conference, Shenzhen international unsold exhibition and China International Beauty Expo are postponed or cancelled. Some experts estimate that in the 2-4 months of this year, there were nearly 3500 domestic exhibitions affected by the new crown virus epidemic, covering an area of 50 million square meters.

The global epidemic situation is still unclear, and the offline exhibitions will not be resumed in the short term. The impact of the Convention and exhibition economy began to turn to the cloud for export.

In April 13th, the Ministry of Commerce issued the notice on the Innovation Exhibition Service Mode to foster the new energy development of the exhibition industry. It clearly pointed out that we should actively create a new platform for online exhibitions, promote the integration and development of online and offline exhibitions, and cultivate leading enterprises and brand exhibitions of Online exhibitions.

For a while, online exhibitions became the hot words of the exhibition industry, and the Internet giants also launched "enclosure movement".

Tencent occupies the Pearl River Delta, and will serve as the technical service provider of the Canton Fair. It will also provide online conference services for the United Nations 57th anniversary. Ali, which is based on the Yangtze River Delta, will jointly hold a joint venture with Cheng Liyun, Shanghai Shanghai International Exhibition Co., Ltd., which will hold the world's first small commodity online exhibition for Yiwu, China's commodity city. In June 8th, Alibaba held the online rendezvous, becoming the largest online exhibition in cross-border trade.

Zhang Kuo, general manager of Alibaba international station, told reporters including the twenty-first Century economic report that the biggest competition for the foreign trade industry in the future is the competition between new foreign trade and old foreign trade. Alibaba, as the core of the Internet Trade Fair held by Internet companies, is to help offline businesses go to the new era of foreign trade from the old foreign trade era, and bring incremental value to all businesses. Now fully digitized trading accounts for less than 10% of the total foreign trade export, and this proportion will reach 50% in the future. All enterprises should have the ability of digitalization quickly.

Zhang Xiaoming pointed out to the twenty-first Century economic report reporter that online exhibitions will play an important role in enhancing the continuity, continuity and user stickiness of mice.

In fact, for the exhibition industry, digital transformation is not a new concept under the new crown epidemic situation. As early as 2016, some exhibition enterprises began to try to upgrade the industry through digital technology transformation. In the 6-12 month of 2016, the palm Expo platform hosted the first online science and Technology Culture Expo in China and the first online national key university publicity and enrollment thematic exhibition, in order to explore the "online convention and exhibition economy" innovation mode.

On the one hand, the epidemic has become a catalyst, accelerating the digital transformation of exhibition economy and accelerating the coverage of online exhibition. On the other hand, there is still debate about whether the online convention and exhibition economy can completely replace the Convention and exhibition economy.

Offline exhibition can not be replaced

According to the data collected by ExpoSCM through open channels, as of April 27th, 86% of the world's exhibitions were postponed under the epidemic situation, 9% of the exhibitions were explicitly cancelled, and 5% of the exhibitions chose online, scheduled, split, merger and other ways.

This also shows from the side that although the digital transformation has been shouting for many years, the current offline exhibition is still the mainstream mode of exhibition for the exhibition industry.

Dr Zhang Xiaoming told the economic news reporters in twenty-first Century that online exhibition was a helpless measure for the development of MICE industry under the epidemic situation. In recent years, online exhibitions can not fundamentally replace offline exhibitions. On the central line of the epidemic, mice are popular. After the outbreak, the exhibition is dominated by offline exhibitions. However, there may be some new developments on the basis of previous developments.

There are two main reasons for online convention and exhibition being unable to replace traditional offline exhibition. One is that offline exhibition can provide a stakeholder experience for exhibitors to understand the new product launch dynamic experience. But for online mice, this kind of entity experience is missing.

Secondly, the online exhibition has higher requirements for the digitalization of the exhibition enterprises, and most of the exhibition enterprises are small and medium-sized enterprises. In the short run, it is difficult to meet the equipment, capital and personnel requirements of the online exhibition. In the digital transformation of convention and exhibition enterprises, small and medium-sized mice enterprises need to rely on the support provided by the state in terms of equipment and funds.

"In a virtual space, it is hard for exhibitors to pay the booth fee voluntarily and happily, so that advertisers and sponsors can make generous efforts in the virtual space." Zhang Xiaoming analyzed that there are three blocking points in online exhibition and offline Exhibition: first, the interpersonal communication between exhibitors and spectators is not thorough and the sense of on-site experience is not strong enough; two, the economic benefits of convention and exhibition activities can not be effectively realized; three, the business model of online exhibitions is far from being realized. Based on this, offline exhibition has its non reproducing ability.

Coincidentally, Ceng Jiaxin, vice president of Tencent cloud, said in an interview that the line is not completely replaced by the line. The form of future exhibition is definitely not pure online. After the end of the epidemic, the two wheel drive under the online and offline will be the norm of the Convention and exhibition.

Convention and exhibition industry in Tai Wan District

As the leading and core of the domestic exhibition industry, the exhibition industry in Guangdong, Hongkong and Macau is also at the forefront of digital transformation.

Guangzhou is one of the main bases of China's Convention and exhibition industry. Its position in the exhibition industry of Tai Wan is the economic and Trade Exhibition Center. The representative exhibitions include the China Import and Export Fair (Canton Fair), the International Rubber Exhibition and the Southern China International Dental Exhibition.

In terms of digital transformation, the Guangzhou Fair held an attempt to catch the net during the SARS in 2003. According to official figures, the intention of the online Canton Fair was $290 million, confirming a turnover of US $76 million 640 thousand. In addition to the extension of the Canton Fair, the official website of the Canton Fair is open and the daily traffic is maintained at around 600 thousand.

After the SARS epidemic, the online Canton Fair has also been extended, to a certain extent, laying the foundation for the 127th Canton Fair to fight again in 2020.

In the industrial layout of Tai Wan, Shenzhen's dominant industries are high-tech industries, financial industries and cultural industries. The representative exhibitions are mainly exhibitions of technology and culture, such as China International hi tech fair, China International Cultural Industry Fair, China International photoelectricity exposition, etc.

In September 28, 2019, the Shenzhen International Convention and Exhibition Center was officially completed and became the largest international convention and Exhibition Center in the world. After the completion of the center, Shenzhen and Guangzhou began to show "dual hegemony" in the competition of exhibition economy in Guangdong, Hongkong and Macau.

Shenzhen has unique hardware advantages for digital transformation and upgrading. During the planning, design and construction of Shenzhen International Convention and Exhibition Center, the network signal has been deployed and arranged in advance. It is the first exhibition hall in the world to realize the 5G signal coverage in the whole hall.

5G empowerment ensures that the live effect of the exhibition can be guaranteed. At the same time, the process of early intention communication, building customer information base, purchasing orders and signing the contract is centralized in the unified network reception room, so as to improve the communication efficiency between the two sides.

Besides, the exhibition industry in Hongkong should be mentioned in particular. As the largest and most international exhibition and Exhibition Centre in Asia, Hongkong has as many as 4 million overseas business travellers every year. As a free trade port and a RMB Offshore settlement center, Hongkong has a natural advantage in tax revenue and cross-border exhibition.

In the face of digital transformation, Hongkong's strategy is to drive O2O online and offline. On the anniversary of the return of Hongkong in July 1, 2017, the O2O E-Commerce Association of Hongkong held a 3-7 day O2O Shopping Festival to enable enterprises to display products at the exhibition site and promote them online, so as to realize the development of e-commerce in Hongkong.

In April 1st of this year, the Hongkong Trade Development Council also adopted the O2O mode to launch a month long "online procurement Station" of the "TDC" spring, which led the enterprises to transfer the business platform. The platform has about 13 high-quality suppliers and 2 million international buyers, and has established more than 24 million trade links each year.

The times are changing and the technology is changing rapidly. The exhibition industry is also constantly upgrading. No matter how the form changes, how to enrich the content of exhibition, how to help the two sides to communicate effectively, how to realize the benefit of the exhibition economy to the regional industry is always the essence of the exhibition industry. (Editor: Li Yanxia, liyx@21jingji.com)