ATLANTA—With a little less than two months to go before AAHOACON23, the Asian American Hotel Owners Association (AAHOA) has already set a record for the number of booth sales for its April 11-14 show at the Los Angeles Convention Center—making it the largest in the organization’s history.
While the 2019 show, which celebrated AAHOA’s 30th Anniversary, totaled 77,500 square feet of exhibit space, this year’s show is already at 81,900 square feet. In total, the association expects to end up with more than 500 unique exhibiting companies and see a 12% year-over-year growth in net square feet. It is also on pace to exceed 2019 registration totals of more than 8,000 attendees.
New features for 2023 include the AAHOA Garage, a demo area for exhibitors to showcase tips and tricks to solve common issues that many hoteliers face in areas such as housekeeping, maintenance, repairs and troubleshooting; new learning opportunities for members in the form of deep-dive master classes; and an expanded HerOwnership initiative, which encourages more women in the hospitality industry to pursue hotel ownership—all of which have contributed to the growth.
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Laura Lee Blake, AAHOA President and CEO, attributes it to other factors as well. “Apart from bringing on new talent to the team that really put a great deal of effort into selling the show floor and having many of our key exhibitors confirmed, we ran targeted and re-targeted email campaigns to past exhibitors and new prospects,” she said. “We also established a vendor advisory committee and began to capture insights from our vendor/exhibitor community to assist in further developing our show content, which opened up new selling opportunities.”
AAHOA recently partnered with Oxford Economics to better understand the demographics of its members and their economic contributions, and found that they spend $50 billion with suppliers each year and own 60% of the hotels in the nation. “They’re the decision-makers, and based on these facts and our unique audience, we are able to offer an experience that other trade shows simply can’t match,” she said.
“This is an exciting time for AAHOA, as this annual flagship event has historically been the most highly anticipated ‘Super Bowl’ event of the industry—created exclusively for hotel owners, with thousands of attendees, world-class entertainment and hundreds of vendors ready to make deals.”
Reach Laura Lee Blake at (404) 816-5759
