Two trade shows cancelled due to Sars
Published: 01 May 2003 09:01 BST
The CommunicAsia and BroadcastAsia trade shows, scheduled for June 17 to 20 this year, has been scrapped because of the SARS outbreak, the organisers Singapore Exhibition Services (SES) announced on Thursday.
Stephen Tan, chief executive of SES said: "This is a very difficult decision borne out of necessity due to the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars) outbreak, and the lack of options for a suitable time frame in which to re-schedule the events."
He added that it is SES's "utmost priority to safeguard the well being of our exhibitors and visitors who have shown us unwavering support all these years."
The show will be cancelled and not postponed because moving it to later in the year will make it clash with major tech events, said SES.
SES polled exhibitors for their views on whether to postpone or scrap the 2003 show, and it is believed that many had also said that their calendar was already filled for the rest of the year.
"Postponing the shows to the second half of the year was considered but no suitable alternative window was available as the world calendar for this period is already filled with other events such as BIRTV (Beijing), IBC (Amsterdam), ITU World Telecom (Geneva), CTIA Wireless (Las Vegas), InterBee (Japan) and Comdex (Las Vegas)," according to the SES statement.
The next BroadcastAsia and CommunicAsia are scheduled to take place June 15 to 18 next year.
SES could not be contacted for comment on whether refunds would be given to exhibitors who have paid deposits for the cancelled show.
At CommunicAsia 2002 last year, there were a total of 37,000 visitors and 1,448 exhibiting companies from 41 countries. SES also said that there was a 13 percent rise in foreign visitors compared with 2001.
Participants last year included Microsoft, Kyocera, Sony Ericsson, Agilent Technologies, CommWorks, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic, Samsung, Siemens and Hewlett Packard.
Today's announcement follows the postponement of another infocomms show, Computex Taipei 2003.
Foreign visitor arrivals to both Singapore and Taiwan have dropped sharply since the start of the outbreak. Without overseas buyers and staff at the tech shows, the events would considered failures, according to exhibitors that CNETAsia spoke to.
SARS has infected 5,460 people worldwide and killed more than 350 since emerging in China late last year, according to the World Health Organisation.
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