Between People
Some one hundred years ago life was orderly. We, the then Jaarbeurs, organised the first comprehensive trade fair promoting Dutch products in 1917. Our role as an intermediary between supply and demand as remained unchanged throughout the years. However, the manner in which we play this role has changed: we changed our name to VNU Exhibitions Europe in 2002.
‘Everything under one roof at the same time in Utrecht’ has evolved into a market-leading portfolio comprised of more than eighty trade fairs. We develop and organise national business and consumer trade fairs in the Netherlands and abroad, as well as regional events and highly exclusive invitation-only meetings for senior management.
Our targets specify that both national and international growth shall be achieved by launching new products, acquisitions and partnerships. Our targets also specify that in the longer term we shall endeavour to supplement our entire trade fair portfolio with a – rapidly increasing – number of online products designed to make and maintain contacts on 365 days a year. Our primary objective continues to be the provision of valuable sales contacts to our customers.
The times in which our exhibitors launched new products solely at trade fairs are gone. Companies select the time and the channel they regard as most suitable for their purposes, whereby issues such as effectiveness, quantifiability and convenience play an increasingly important role. We have evolved with this development. During the past years our innovative approach has received a number of national and international awards. Moreover, we are the sole Benelux trade fair organiser to arrange for audits of all our trade fairs.
Nowadays our visitors have access to enormous amounts of information, and the number of communications stimuli continues to grow. We perceive our duty as streamlining this information for our visitors, providing them an insight into complex markets, and inspiring them.
We took a couple of major steps forward ten years ago that have given us an edge. We have compiled records of our knowledge of visitors in databases: we now record or update more than 1 million customer profiles per annum. In addition, we make continually increasing use of the technological opportunities available to enrich company, job and personal details – an approach that enables us to steadily improve matching our visitors with suppliers and products tailored to their specific needs.
We focus on the continual expansion and enrichment of our knowledge of the markets we serve. We are thoroughly familiar with our customers’ markets: we can help them make the appropriate new contacts at any time they require, and we can help them maintain their existing business relationships.
We are a company which believes in the human dimension: we make major investments in new technologies and databases since we are aware that our staff interpret the available information for our customers. We attach great importance to permanent staff training and development, an approach which results in enthusiastic and involved staff – which, self-evidently, is of benefit to our customers. We build a bridge between new marketing insights, the very latest technology/online technology, and personal contacts – and will continue our investments in these fields.
VNU Exhibitions Europe is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Royal Dutch Jaarbeurs. Our VNU Exhibitions Asia branch in Shanghai is one of the larger trade fair organisers.
Travel & Active cluster
Vakantiebeurs is part of the VNU EE’s Travel & Active cluster, which organises the trade fairs related to VNU EE’s travel and active segment. A complete list of all the trade fairs is available here, together with more information about each trade fair.
