What could be done to improve the LIBS?

Just to balance it out a little bit...

And I write this two days after breakdown after calming down and seriously considering any further involvement with ExCel / NBS after being treated like dirt (and that's being nice...) sometimes they (their contractors) need to remember who pays their bills..

Any how, I drive into to town from Twickenham via the 316 / A4 / Embankment and onto Excel via the Limehouse link. yes you pay the congestion charge and yes I have to pay to park but on average it never takes me more than an hour even in rush our traffic.
 
Richard Shead said:
Just to balance it out a little bit...

And I write this two days after breakdown after calming down and seriously considering any further involvement with ExCel / NBS after being treated like dirt (and that's being nice...) sometimes they (their contractors) need to remember who pays their bills..

Any how, I drive into to town from Twickenham via the 316 / A4 / Embankment and onto Excel via the Limehouse link. yes you pay the congestion charge and yes I have to pay to park but on average it never takes me more than an hour even in rush our traffic.
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I accept what you say but it will be the exhibitor numbers, sales achieved and punter numbers that will determine the final future of the show and to many on here it's not looking good when compared to sibs. I get a free ticket and
couldn't be bothered to get on my motorcycle this year and cross London from Slough.
 
john_morris_uk said:
Anyway, stand fast the liferaft, what is it that you might buy at a show that you can't carry on the train? I would never normally think of buying rope/lines etc at a boat show. The prices aren't that keen compared to online or boat jumbles.

Perhaps this explains why my thinking about Excel is so different to a lot of people?
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A lot of people's mindset is still back in the show's heyday when , as well as everything else, it was a place for cheap deals on all kinds of things. My parents saw the boatshow as the obvious place to go to replace their 25 year old yellow PVC oilies with something modern when we bought Kindred Spirit, and they expected to buy all kinds of other gear for the boat at a hefty discount. Obviously with this in mind you would want a car to bring it all home in.

(In fact, although they did buy oilskins, boots, and shoes, they were disappointed with both the range of stuff available and the prices, compared to what they remember in years past. They have no intention of going back.)

Pete
 
skipper_stu said:
North Wales to the outposts of the empire is what it is to us!
I drove there once, stopped the night, far too expensive and a ball breaker of a drive to get there, no thanks!
Stu
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But Southampton cannot be that much easier for you, can it? North Wales is simply a long way away from anywhere.
 
Went on Friday. We arrived at about 11:00.
There were only four people walking up the steps at the same time as we were... That should be just about the peak arrival time of the day so clearly it is going very badly wrong somewhere.

We went ready to spend money. And indeed spent £1500 on what we were after. However, there was a very limited array of suppliers for what we wanted so that was not good.

Although we spent £1500, we resented being ripped of £15 for car parking. Indeed we nearly turned round when we saw the price of the car park. By comparison parking at SIBS is reasonable. Add £20 a ticket and the day starts to get very expensive to just look at shops, yet because Excell is so clinical, it is not a "day out".

The exhibition hall is easy to walk about but in a way that detracts from the show. Up one isle and down the other one and you have seen absolutely everything. There is no discovering anything. The boats also look the same from floor level. A long row of hulls seen from below.

Also everything is on ground floor level so everything looks the same. At Olympia there was a balcony where you could look at the central area from above and you got an sense of the theatre of the place. This is missing at Excell. As is the presentation of boats. Whilst mobo's can look very impressive under a big roof, sailing yachts look like they are castrated by not having any proper rigging.

We certainly will not bother going back next year. And when people who have been going tonthenBoat Show since theybwe spotty teenagers start saying that... it is the end...
 
There seems to be a divide between people used to public transport and those that are not. I have not used a train for about 30 years (the London underground excepted) and wouldn't be interested in visiting a boat show unless I could drive there. Perhaps most potential boat show visitors fall into the same category?

Excel is an unattractive place to drive to, except for the relatively small number of people living in or near to east London.

I suspect that a substantial majority of potential boat show visitors would prefer to drive to SIBS.
 
john_morris_uk said:
I've bought lots of things - including major items at boat shows. But when I've bought an engine, or a propeller etc its usually been delivered to my boat later.

I've never considered the boat show to be a place to go shopping for things at (except the few things I could carry on the train). I've always considered it a place to go and see things that I might order later.

Anyway, stand fast the liferaft, what is it that you might buy at a show that you can't carry on the train? I would never normally think of buying rope/lines etc at a boat show. The prices aren't that keen compared to online or boat jumbles.

Perhaps this explains why my thinking about Excel is so different to a lot of people?
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My thinking is very similar - it's a showcase - good for researching major purchases. In my experience, our local chandlery will usually match the special offers available at the show and I have the benefit of a local supplier in case there is any problem with the item. We didn't go to LIBS this year, and I'm not at all sure we will go to Southampton either - we've made all our major purchases for the next year or two. I will probably fit an autopilot this spring, but I researched it at Southampton last year and know exactly what I need.
 
Tomahawk said:
The exhibition hall is easy to walk about but in a way that detracts from the show. Up one isle and down the other one and you have seen absolutely everything. There is no discovering anything. The boats also look the same from floor level. A long row of hulls seen from below.
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An intesting concept. I hate shopping, even for the boat, but the layout worked for me. Time is short, and I had a 3 hour train ride up from Exeter, and I don't want to waste time seeking out stalls.

Seeing the hulls was fantastic, I might be a bit nerdy here, but I like to see hull shape. After all the insides and decks are all identical on the AWB.
 
I'm surprised by people complaining about the cost of parking. What do people think the cost of parking in a provincial city center is?

Parking in the center of the nearest city to me costs £12 for 6 - 8 hours. Now I can hunt for a cheaper parking location, but it won't be as convenient. The same applies to Excel.

A quick google suggests a pre-booked parking space as Earls court is £25, 6-10 hours.
 
Fittster said:
I'm surprised by people complaining about the cost of parking. What do people think the cost of parking in a provincial city center is?

Parking in the center of the nearest city to me costs £12 for 6 - 8 hours. Now I can hunt for a cheaper parking location, but it won't be as convenient. The same applies to Excel.

A quick google suggests a pre-booked parking space as Earls court is £25, 6-10 hours.
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Indeed and I think I said that earlier on as I paid near enough that for the ski show at EC.

Think point being its 15 quid flat rate even if you turn up at 4pm for two hours. EC you can pay by hour.
 
Move to a cheaper location to attract back small & large exhibitors – Wembley Arena maybe ?
Focus on exhibiting the latest gear, knowledge, publications and technology – not selling end of the line sailing clothes and deck shoes.
Far more interactive opportunities needed to experience and try out new gear without being forced to by it.
Use the water pool facilities for demonstrating sailing skills and new equipment – not as a family video opportunity for kids to play around in plastic inflatable kayaks.
Move date of show to Mid-April when it will be warm enough to venture outside to view vessels in the water.
Reduce the price of beer from over £5 a pint to get people to drink more and get them in the mood to buy.
Reduce price of flat rate car parking from £15 per day to an hourly rate. Excel centre is much easier to get to by car.
 
gjbentley said:
Move to a cheaper location to attract back small & large exhibitors – Wembley Arena maybe ?
Focus on exhibiting the latest gear, knowledge, publications and technology – not selling end of the line sailing clothes and deck shoes.
Far more interactive opportunities needed to experience and try out new gear without being forced to by it.
Use the water pool facilities for demonstrating sailing skills and new equipment – not as a family video opportunity for kids to play around in plastic inflatable kayaks.
Move date of show to Mid-April when it will be warm enough to venture outside to view vessels in the water.
Reduce the price of beer from over £5 a pint to get people to drink more and get them in the mood to buy.
Reduce price of flat rate car parking from £15 per day to an hourly rate. Excel centre is much easier to get to by car.
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More importantly where was the beer £5 a pint? as much as I hate ExCel you cannot fault the food in there for a big expo venue in the UK.
 
JumbleDuck said:
I like the idea of having lots more hands-on activities at the London show. What about marine cookery competitions in a simulated galley, moving about as if at sea? Splicing lessons? Wiring seminars?
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mjcoon said:
Marine fire-fighting demo? (Following on from YM's crash boat tests.)
Mike.
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I think these are great ideas and I would even be prepared to pay a small fee for joining a seminar such as this.
I agree the pool could be much better used - how about the drill on various methods of getting MOB back on board? Or getting people into the liferaft?

Does anyone know is there is an official way to give feeback to LIBS or even if they are interested in what the punters say?
 
Sorry to go against the flow, but contrary to expectations, I actually quite enjoyed going to the Show. I went on the last Sunday.

It's an easy drive from the North Essex coast and parking was no problem, although I gulped a bit at £15 for the car park - £10 would have been more than enough I think. Food was expensive but then it's London and although it was costly it was quite good quality (used the RYA lounge). Fortunately we had free tickets; thank you, Navigators Insurance!

Bought what I thought was the best waterproof Ipad Air case I have ever seen - http://www.andres-industries.de - and which I hadn't seen in the UK before, together with a really clever vacuum lever universal joint mount for it, again from Germany - http://www.fender-design.com. Neither of these are in any local chandler and so without going to the show I would not have known they existed. 'Show Special Offer Price' saved me £70 on my new sea water pump that I needed for my Volvo MD2020. And I had a day out looking at boats and boat bits in the depths of winter. What's not to like?
 
Regards car parking…

£10 to park is steep but OK-ish. But when it goes up 50% I get the feeling I am being ripped off. Then the catering is very expensive and not too good either. This is an attractor event, (or should be) there should be a huge foot fall with lots of hungry people. Volume should mean lower prices, but the converse seems to apply. "It's a boat show so you must pay extra" attitude pervades. I get an overall sense of being taken for a ride by Excel and the organisers.

It is my money, and it is discretionary spend. I don't have to spend anything. If you want to get me to pull my wallet out my pocket, it is good to be nice to me and give me a sense of being a valued customer instead of someone to rip off.
 
Fittster said:
I'm surprised by people complaining about the cost of parking. What do people think the cost of parking in a provincial city center is?
Parking in the center of the nearest city to me costs £12 for 6 - 8 hours. Now I can hunt for a cheaper parking location, but it won't be as convenient. The same applies to Excel.

…..
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And that same provincial centre is slowly dying on its feet with shops closing down and charity shops moving into what used to be prime retail space.. There is a mantra to punish car drivers for having the temerity to not use public transport that is not fit for purpose..
 
ChattingLil said:
I think these are great ideas and I would even be prepared to pay a small fee for joining a seminar such as this.
I agree the pool could be much better used - how about the drill on various methods of getting MOB back on board? Or getting people into the liferaft?

Does anyone know is there is an official way to give feeback to LIBS or even if they are interested in what the punters say?
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Hello, As many on here are aware I worked for NBS for 2 years in Show marketing. I don't work there any more (I left to go travelling, otherwise I probably would still work there) and I would stress that the following is purely a PERSONAL reflection on that time and the current debate. I do NOT speak on behalf of NBS. I may even be burning bridges simply by writing this.

Reading this thread has been absolutely fascinating for me, as it has definitely proved the old adage "there's nothing new under the sun". Whilst I was there we ran talks at LBS (the I was dropped a while ago by the way) on the "knowledge box" completely for free. We were certain this would be hugely popular, as we were constantly told by punters and exhibitors alike that that this was what they wanted. But it was totally disheartening. We had big name boating celebs such as Tom Cunliffe, Mike Golding etc, and detailed talks on engine maintenance, winch servicing, cooking demonstrations, insurance, weather from Simon Keeling, you name it. 50 people sitting down for these talks was the exception, frequently a mere handful would turn up. And these talks were promoted in advance on the website, and heavily pushed in the email marketing, flyers were handed out on arrival etc. The biggest crowd I saw in 2 years of running that feature was when we had Brian Thompson fresh back from the successful Jules Verne record attempt and I got to interview him on stage. The crowd was about 100 - maybe 150, on a day where over 10,000 people had come through the doors.

At the same time we had the big pool, and demos on everything from canoeing to liferafts and MOB recovery. Again to small crowds. The only thing that got big crowds was the pro wakeboarding, NOT the interesting topics that yachtsmen kept telling us they wanted.

The forums at this time were also frankly depressing on a personal level. Simply because I had personally spent massive amounts of time and effort finding the best speakers I could, I even offered Dylan a spot! I got to go to a fair number of them, and they really were almost entirely excellent and I always learnt something, but there was almost no mention whatsoever about these aspects of the show on these forums. Instead all the topics at the time simply concentrated on the number of boats. I remember well one thread that was entitled something like "review of the Show" and the OP was many paragraphs detailing bits of kit he'd seen, what the new Southerly was like, where he had lunch yet it didn't even mention the massive indoor pool we'd put in, or in fact any of the attractions that we'd spent time and money on, specifically to appeal to the kind of committed yachtie he clearly was. And the replies ran and ran, with still no mention. I remember showing it to my boss and asking "why do we bother?"

The cruising chute attraction was another one. Brilliant idea from John Goode, and actually held reasonable crowds, but expensive to put on and in the end wasn't drawing the crowds through the door, just holding people's attention once they were in. So at the time I left the call had been taken to trim back drastically the spend on the things that boaters (and I'm glad I can stop using that word now I've left NBS!) told us they wanted, but in reality weren't using, and concentrate on offering the best possible incentives for boats to appear at the show.

But at the end of the day it's a very expensive thing to do to put on a Show, and every exhibitor has to balance spend vs their goals. For retailers such as the chandleries it's a pretty simple equation, and in the age of internet retail it is of no surprise to see their numbers dwindling. For equipment and boat manufacturers it's more complicated as it's not necessarily about sales made at the show, and it's fair to say that some make it work for them, and others don't. Whether this is product, staff, stand design, or any other factor is often hard to tell but I'll tell you one thing for sure, it isn't excel. I once produced a graph of attendance at the show on a year by year basis, and it was absolutely clear that the move to Excel at first reversed the decline in numbers that had been happening at Earls Court, then slowed it down. If I remember correctly (and naturally I don't still have access to these figures) it was 5 years after the move to Excel before the attendance was smaller than the last year at Earls Court. If it had stayed at earls court and declined at the same rate it would be long gone. Move the Show to the NEC or similar and you limit yourself to boats that can get onto a low loader, and in all probability increase costs for boat companies to get their boats to the venue. There's also the problem of finding a hole in the calendar that the NEC or similar could hold the Boat Show. In addition to the actual time of the Show the Boat Show has by far the longest build up and breakdown time of any annual Show in the country, and if I recall correctly there is only 1 show that is ever at Excel that requires longer, which is held once every 4 years. So you need to find at least a month, probably longer, where your venue has nothing booked. Any venue that has a month free as a block is in trouble. So you'd need years of notice to be able to do that.

I think many people who bash the show and open with statements like "I've been going since 1980..." forget that you're not the same sailor you were then. You've learnt, improved, confirmed what it is you want out of sailing, and what you loved about the Show in the past was the opportunity to discover new things. I remember walking around Earls Court with my Dad going "wow, what is that!?" at bit of kit such as radar, chart plotters, MOB recovery systems etc. By the time the Show moved to Excel I was a yachtmaster with thousands of miles under my belt, and the Show took less time to go around not because there was less there, but because there was less that was NEW TO ME. In my mind there will always be a certain number of people, probably in the low tens of thousands, who will always visit the show just because they love all things boaty, then there will be those who need to research new big ticket items, such as radar, etc or even those in the market for new boats, and they will be similarly numbered, but those for whom the show is the most useful are visitors who are much earlier in their boating careers, and come to the show to ask questions, learn things, discover new kit, look at boats for ideas as to how to modify their own. And their numbers have declined year on year, as fewer people are taking up the pastime.

Will the Show survive? Yes, undoubtedly. The thing that always struck me about the Show was that we would spend all week taking a kicking from everyone, the visitors, the exhibitors, the press (mentioning no names....) but it used to be one of my roles to get quotes for the end of Show press release and it was always easy. At the end of the week you'd go around to the stands and say "so have you had a good week?" and the majority would say "yes, we've met our targets and we're very happy". I gather from my former colleagues that nothing has changed in this respect, and as long as that remains the case it will continue. One exhibitor once told me that without the sales boost in January that the Show gave him he'd have gone bust 4 February's running. He drove a brand new Jag. When all's said and done any "shop" in the marine sector that can get 90,000 largely affluent enthusiasts through the door in January is doing something right. Ok, I know the reluctance on here to trust NBS figures, but the total number of school kids on trips was (and I'm sure still is) limited to circa 1,000 total across the week, about 1% of the total.... Factor in kids with their families and other non enthusiasts and call it 70,000 people with an interest in boats and money in their wallets to spend. That's a hell of a draw to any company trading in a pretty niche sector in their low season.

But how to improve it? Got me. NBS aren't arrogant, and they really do listen. In that respect it was by far and away the most enlightened place I've ever worked, and the staff there are very, very open to new ideas. So please believe me that everything that's been suggested above that isn't "ditch it" has been examined, and pretty much everything that's in any way feasible has been tried. I reached the conclusion that the only sure fire way to bring huge hordes of happy punters is to completely stuff the halls with boats. Every boat available today in one shed. Which of course is exactly what they're trying to do! But if we the boating public aren't buying boats then the boat manufacturers don't have the cash to bring them to be traipsed over by the general boating public. Even if the space was suddenly free the costs of exhibiting are still large, and sales need to be made to justify it. Make no mistake, if new boats were being bought today at the same rates as they were in the heyday of Westerly etc the Show would be massive. But they aren't, so it isn't.
 
Darn it Flaming! Trust you to burst the bubbles of hot air on this forum with some actual knowledge and hard facts. You spoil the game!
 
Interesting discussion. I have not been to the LIBS for some years now. I prefer to go to the USA or Germany to get a different perspectiv. Yes things have changed - international travel is much easier and cheaper than it used to be. When I lived in the UK outside of London it was much the same effort and not that much more in cost for me to go to the German show. USA cost more but there i got ot see a different range of craft and different attitudes to boating so worth it.
 
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