THE exhibitions and convention industry has taken an estimated RM1.75 billion hit as a result of the movement-control order to curb Covid-19 transmissions.

Some 1,250 events have been cancelled since March, said Malaysian Association of Convention and Exhibition Organisers and Suppliers (Maceos) president Vincent Lim, citing feedback from a poll among members in May.

Based on the response, the RM1.75 billion included cancellations of future events booked for the first three quarters of this year.

“From March till year-end, at least 70%, or 1,250 business events were cancelled,” Lim told The Malaysian Insight.

The outlook is uncertain, as it usually takes three to four months to prepare for a large exhibition. Since large gatherings are still prohibited because of Covid-19, organisers and suppliers can only opt to defer or cancel their events.

Among some of the exhibitions and large fairs that would have taken place include the Malaysian International Furniture Fair scheduled for March; the Kuala Lumpur International Machine Tool, Metal Processing, Industrial Automation Exhibition in June; and the Kuala Lumpur Architecture and Interior Design Exhibition in July.

Lim said many international events have been deferred until next year because of travel restrictions and border control rules by various countries to prevent transmission of the coronavirus.

So far, Putrajaya has only allowed the resumption of seminars, courses, conferences and training activities limited to 250 people, under the usual procedures of temperature checks and registration.

The association proposed guidelines to the government, including examples from around the world, as a guide for future exhibitions.

These include hygiene, health checks on visitors, social distancing, flow of traffic around exhibition halls and contact-tracing procedures.

Some organisers tried to hold online events, such as Francis Wong, who usually handles an annual education fair that runs from the end of March to April.

He said it’s pointless to defer the physical event to a later date as school and university semester schedules have changed because of the pandemic.

By moving the education fair online, he said parents and students only needed to browse the fair’s website, which acts as a platform to connect them with a representative from an institution of higher learning in a one-on-one chatroom. From there, registrations or online enrolment is possible.

“Putting the exhibition online and enabling live chats with the institution’s representative is good for parents and students to have someone answer their questions. This is a new normal way to hold exhibitions and have engagement.”

Efforts must be made to keep the exhibitions industry going, Wong added, because the economic returns such events brought are significant.

He cited the popular Pikom PC fair on computers and information technology as an example.

Past surveys on the economic returns of large exhibitions found that if it costs RM1 million to hold a fair, the spill-over effect is 12 times with nearby hotels, petrol stations, tourism receipts and food and beverage consumption among the beneficiaries.

Maceos said the exhibitions and conventions industry has grown in recent years. Last year, 1,025 activities were organised from 1,014 in 2018.

These events attracted around half a million international business travellers to Malaysia, contributing around RM3.9 billion in direct expenditure to the country and RM9.2 billion in economic impact. – June 23, 2020.