NEW ORLEANS — A once-every-150-year snowfall in New Orleans created chaos for this year’s NADA Show — but organizers were able to get ahead of it.
Melissa Wolpert, CMP, Senior Vice President, Meetings, Conventions & Expositions at the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA), could never have dreamed up a snowstorm like the one that hit New Orleans on January 21. The city shattered its all-time daily snowfall record, recording 8 inches of snow — far more than the previous record of 2.7 inches.
“In my 28 years in this industry, I have never dealt with something like this,” Wolpert said. “We all thought, ‘No, not in New Orleans. The forecast was saying 3 to 5 inches, and we figured, ‘Oh, maybe 3 inches, and it’ll be gone pretty fast. But it wasn’t.”
For more than 100 years, the NADA Show, which was held January 23-26 at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, has been the industry event of the year for franchised new-car dealerships, their employees and their customers. It was expected to draw more than 20,000 attendees, and to use nearly all of the center’s 1.1 million square feet of exhibit space.
Once the decision was made to move forward despite the upcoming weather, the team sprung into action, rescheduling almost all the freight for arrival on Sunday, January 19, instead of staggering it as they had planned, and moving the rest to Monday. “We got way ahead of it,” she said. “The floor was a mess getting ready, but if we hadn’t done that prework, we wouldn’t have been able to open.” In the end, they lost only 40 out of 500+ exhibitors.
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Communication was key. Organizers communicated schedule changes via email and on social media, along with videos of the snow and regular updates from President and CEO Mike Stanton.
The schedule was re-jiggered, with the opening reception moved to Thursday night, the main stage Friday morning and the exhibition, which was supposed to open first thing Friday morning, bumped to noon. Almost symbolically, their tent at Heritage Park, where the opening reception was to be held, collapsed. That event had to be moved indoors to the Sugar Mill, which is situated directly across from the convention center.
In the end, attendance was at 73%, with approximately 15,000 people showing up despite the airport being closed by the storm. The show did not lose a single speaker. “People flew into Atlanta; Jackson, Mississippi; and Florida, and drove. It was pretty amazing,” she said. “The automotive industry is the most resilient industry ever seen.”
Wolpert’s calmness as a leader rubbed off on her team of 12. “My job was to remain calm and positive, and I’m pretty proud of myself that I was able to,” she said. “We have a saying in my house that Wolperts don’t give up, and I told the room, you’re all Wolperts this week. We got this.”
Reach Melissa Wolpert at MWOLPERT@nada.org
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