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Two views of the main building
of the Ferial de Madrid (IFEMA), with contemporary
sculpture
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In 1980, its first year of operations, Madrid's
new Instituto Ferial de Madrid, commonly known as
IFEMA, organized 15 trade fairs. In all, 2,200 firms
participated and the fairs drew a million visitors.
This year, its 25th anniversary, IFEMA is a world
class, state-of-the-art exhibition center that will
hold 71 fairs with a total of 20,000 Spanish and
international companies taking part as exhibitors.
An estimated 4.4 million visitors will converge
on Juan Carlos I park to tour the exhibitions. The
projected for 2004 will be 153 million euro ($191
million), racking up a record profit for the year
of 25.6 euro ($30 million).
From its modest beginnings, IFEMA has become one
of the main contributors to Madrid's economic development.
"Madrid's fair has been the gateway into Europe
for many U.S. and other international companies,"
says Fermin Lucas, IFEMA's director.
With Madrid's growing economy, its potential as
a trade show and conference city, it had made sense
in the 1980s to plan new and modern infrastructures
to respond to the need to organize bigger and more
numerous shows and conferences, with the best facilities
and services possible. Over the past five years
Madrid's "Meeting Tourism" has grown spectacularly,
both in terms of quality and quantity, as the number
of shows, conferences, and all types of meeting
has continued to increase.
IFEMA was founded jointly by the Madrid City Council,
the Madrid Chamber of Commerce, and Caja de Madrid
bank. In its quarter century existence around 1,000
fairs have attracted 55 million visitors, and 370,000
companies have participated. The fair site has expanded
along with the trade shows. Five years ago the exhibition
area had eight pavilions on the sprawling site close
to Barajas International Airport. Today there are
10 pavilions covering an area of 150,000 sq. meters.
Just inside the northern entrance is a spectacular
convention center than covers more than 10,000 sq
meters.
IFEMA also includes modern office buildings, hotels,
restaurants, parking for 16,000 cars, and a championship
quality 18-hole golf course. The park is connected
to the city center by metro, and a six minute metro
ride will take you to the airport. IFEMA is currently
investing 10 million euro ($12.6 million) in further
modernization and has built a moving walkway linking
many of the main exhibition locations.
Some 70 trade fairs are annual fixtures, and at
least half can accurately be described as international.
They include the air conditioning fair (one of the
first), and fairs showing leather goods,automobiles,
furniture, fashion, and jewelry. The latter, known
as IBERJOYA and combining silverware and jewelry
starts off the year on Jan 23 and is one of the
largest and most important.It is actually three
complimentary trade shows held simultaneously (the
other two are INTERGIFT, and BISUTEX, a fashion
jewelry trade show) with a very strong international
projection, and with the participation of 500 leading
companies. Last year, IBERJOYA was visited by 19,722
people.
The IFEMA leisure boat show is another major exhibition,
and so is the fashion show. Almost by definition
the fashion shows are flamboyant and have occasionally
hit the headlines.
Two years ago there were loud protests and walkouts
when the models stumbled down the runway wearing
execution-type hoods over their heads as part of
their outfits. Some had large wooden crucifixes
hanging from their necks, or they wore rope nooses.
Among those who walked out enraged was Fermin Lucas,
who declared that the show was offensive to women.
IFEMA was at the center of international politics
in 1991 when the Middle East Peace Conference convened
there under strong security.Last year, delegates
from over 80 countries met there in the International
Donors Conference on Iraq Reconstruction.
But IFEMA's stock in trade is usually sober professionalism.
Most of its exhibitions feature specialized products,
such as dental technology, or industrial machinery,
or tourism. IFEMA, says the business executive quoted
earlier, "is doing important work as a store
window for Madrid by organizing trade fairs and
exhibitions. It is making a major contribution to
tourism, and it has become a commercial center of
the first magnitude."
Nobody realizes this more than the United States
government which, in a unique arrangement, has installed
a large U.S. Commercial Service office at IFEMA
to support American exhibitors and reach out to
visitors. By special arrangement with IFEMA the
Commercial Service gets advance information about
planned trade exhibitions which it passes on to
interested U.S. companies.
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