CHICAGO — At this year’s Trade Show Executive (TSE) Fastest 50 Awards & Summit, Questex LLC’s The Hospitality Show took home the Fastest-Growing Show by Percentage of Growth in Net Square Feet in 2024 and Outstanding Fastest 50 Newcomer Grand Awards.
TSE connected with Alexi Khajavi, Questex’s Group President, Hospitality, Travel & Wellness, to learn the story behind this impactful trade show, its success factors and more.
ANDREW: What inspired this event?
ALEXI: After the COVID-19 pandemic — because we track what kinds of content our subscribers are reading and what type of traffic or stories are performing well on our websites — we noticed that many hotel owners and investors were engaging with content about how to run hotels better.
We took that insight and worked with our data and audience teams to build out a thesis: There was an increasing number of hotel professionals that were seeking content and connectivity around products and solutions that help them run hotels more profitably.
ANDREW: How did you position and launch this show successfully?
ALEXI: We looked at the market, performing a competitive landscape analysis.
We realized that there was a white space in the marketplace, particularly in the U.S., which is the world’s largest hotel market.
We knew we wanted to launch a scaled event. We didn’t want this to be a small, incremental launch that took a decade to grow. To accomplish scale at speed, we knew we needed a partner.
Then, we approached the American Hotel and Lodging Association. We struck a deal with them and launched The Hospitality Show in June of 2023, six months after we first presented the idea.
All of this happened in around a year, and it was one of the largest new launches in all of 2023 in a market that was still recovering from COVID-19.
I wouldn’t suggest that timeline. It was difficult, but it proved to us that if the premise is well-researched and well-executed, with market expertise and insights supporting it, you can launch a substantial event at scale in a crowded market.
ANDREW: What goes into choosing the right partner?
ALEXI: Number one is what I call asymmetric reciprocity, which means that you have to be good at “A” and we have to be good at “B.” Partnerships in which both parties bring the same skill sets, and the same weaknesses, don’t work. You want to find a partner that complements your own strengths and weaknesses and vice versa.
Number two is cultural ethos and fit. We are owned by private equity and therefore we’ve got a high-growth, entrepreneurial mindset. We need a partner that thinks the same way.
Number three is knowing who does what. What are the timelines and who has the decision-making authority? The last thing that partnerships should be is having to ask for approval every time you want to do your job, and you need to stipulate who does what, when they do it and what the authority levels and span of control are across both organizations.
ANDREW: The Hospitality Show won big at this year’s TSE Fastest 50 Awards & Summit. What do you think has driven its recent success?
ALEXI: The main thing that event professionals tend to forget is that you’re appealing to a human need. Yes, we are B2B, but we cater to professionals in markets and those individuals all have needs, wants, issues, challenges, questions and curiosities, and all of those need to be met. The best way to solve those is with a purpose.
Our purpose is very clear, succinct and easy to understand: We are going to connect you with the products, solutions and people to help you run hotels, bars and restaurants more effectively and drive more profits. Full stop.
Everything else — our messaging, our positioning, who we’re speaking to, the brands that we want to bring in, the partnerships we have and the experiences that we want to create — drafts off of that.
This also allows for us to say no to certain things that aren’t on brand, because if it doesn’t fulfill that purpose, then we don’t do it.
Related. TSE Fastest 50 Grand Award Winners Revealed
ANDREW: What challenges has the show run into, and how have they been circumvented and/or avoided?
ALEXI: The pace, skill sets and fortitude needed to launch a new event are explicitly and materially different than the characteristics or talents required in running an established portfolio.
The timelines are tight. There’s a lot of ambiguity. You’re putting things into the marketplace without the luxury of knowing if and how they worked in prior years.
Much of what you’re doing has to be based on informed, data-driven decisions, but also market expertise. Also, your booking patterns are compared to a blank sheet of paper which can be quite scary for event people used to predictable registration and sponsorship performance
Some people thrive in that, and others are better off working and nurturing more-mature assets.
Launching a new event is a once in a lifetime experience and it can be one of the most exhilarating, exciting endeavors in a professional career, but it can also be terrifying.
I encourage any young professional in our industry to raise your hand if a new launch opportunity comes around, because even if you never work on another new launch again, you’ll never forget that one you did.
It will teach you invaluable lessons about collaboration, bold, informed decision making, and require you to be organized and agile all at the same time. It’s an exhilarating experience and it is an incredible opportunity for any young professional.
ANDREW: How do you think the events industry is changing and how is The Hospitality Show keeping up with the times?
ALEXI: We are at an incredible inflection point in the events industry.
The concept that business professionals are going to walk up and down a trade show corridor for two days of their lives, going to every booth, is dead. There are many events that are still modeled in that way, but they have 20-30 years of experience and background behind them and are existing on and trading off of that residual value. We didn’t have that luxury with The Hospitality Show and, frankly, we didn’t want that.
We really encourage our sponsors and customers to create experiences of their own in their booths and on the show floor. How do you bring content into your booth? How do you bring fun and activities into your booth?
Think about incorporating experiences that are natural to your industry and address the problems that you’re trying to solve. For example, more guests are traveling with their pets and hotels are having to cater to this trend and manage the issues that come with it. In response to that industry issue, we created a puppy park which was sponsored by companies that provide solutions for cleaning pet waste. Attendees love it because who doesn’t love a puppy, we supported a local animal shelter as the puppies could be adopted and our sponsors loved it because they could showcase their products in a live real-world environment, in a fun way, to qualified buyers.
We combined an experience with an actual solution to a real-world problem.
Also, we brought content onto the show floor. It’s really important that you don’t create silos and say, “This is where you test products, this is where you network and this is where you learn.”
We’re incorporating local experiences as well. We’re doing local hotel tours … [and] partnering with the local hotel and hospitality sectors and the University of Denver.
ANDREW: What do you appreciate about the events industry?
ALEXI: Like most people, I fell into the events industry 10 years ago, I’ve always fashioned myself as an outsider but I suppose after a decade that’s harder to prove out. I absolutely love the industry. No one really treats best practices as trade secrets — they are open ideas in which to better serve our markets and the communities that we’re in.
We voraciously read TSE because we pick up a lot of these things.
If somebody goes to one bad event, the effect on all the other events is immense. We’ve got to lift all boats and get all events to be modern, fresh, exciting and relevant.
ANDREW: What can you share about The Hospitality Show 2025?
ALEXI: Denver is a hotbed of hospitality. There is a vibrant local and state-level hospitality industry.
We’re launching one-to-one meetings on the show floor and have converted our pricing model: All qualified buyers attend for free and those that take meetings will get their travel expenses reimbursed.
We’re putting the emphasis on connecting buyers and sellers, and creating one-to-one intelligent meetings for the sector.
Hotel performance has been very good, but it’s started to normalize in the last quarter and, with the recent tariffs, the market is predicting a flatlining of hotel performance. Some markets are seeing a decline in revenue and occupancy, and yet costs are increasing.
In fact, costs are increasing at twice the rate that revenues are. We launched the show to help you run hotels more profitably. That’s only going to become even more important in the current environment.
It’s only our third year and The Hospitality Show is still a baby in event terms, but we’ve had incredible growth and are expecting even more.
ANDREW: What other advice would you give to young events professionals?
ALEXI: We are in a noble industry. The opportunity to inform and connect professionals in any market is an incredibly important craft and we’ve got to continue to innovate and push ourselves and each other to do it in a more creative and valuable way for the communities we serve.
To get more success strategies, subscribe to TSE’s free e-newsletter.
