The 2010 Singapore Airshow (Hall 2 Stand B9) has taken reservations for 80 percent of its available space just five months after this year’s inaugural event. Managing director Jimmy Lau is here at Farnborough aiming to sign firm contracts for 30 percent of that area and had already received 15 percent after Farnborough’s opening day. “We have to keep the momentum going,” Lau said yesterday.

The next event will be held earlier than usual, February 2 to 7, to avoid clashing with the Chinese lunar New Year. The move also removes the conflict between Singapore and the Heli-Expo show in the U.S., which in the past have overlapped by a day.
There will be no new buildings for 2010, Lau said, and there will be no temporary exhibition halls. “We decided to do away with building temporary halls as we always get complaints about the floor or the air conditioning being too loud, so we’re trying to squeeze as much as we can out of the main hall and trying to get people to contract for the space early,” said Lau.

A new logo and the tag line, “Asia’s biggest, for aviation’s finest,” is intended to reflect a more global approach, Lau said. “We are trying to position the brand as a global forum rather than just an Asia-Pacific area event. This year we had visitors from 112 countries. The majority were from the Asia-Pacific area but there were a lot from other regions as well.”

Another goal is to increase the number of delegations and improve exhibitors’ access to them. To that end the organizers have hired a former Republic of Singapore colonel to run the delegation management team. “He will put into practice what we put on paper,” Lau said. “It’s all well and good writing down that you want the delegates to meet the exhibitors, but it’s hard to actually do it.”

The team is here this week to see if it can learn from Farnborough International’s approach. “We will also be visiting a couple of other shows that have very good delegate management to pick up more tips,” Lau added.