Sydney International Boat Show – How does it stack up?

by Bob Wonders on 5 Jul 2012 The 45th annual Sydney International Boat Show, organised by the Boating Industry Association (BIA) of New South Wales, is being held from 2nd to 6th August 2012.

The BIA is rightly proud of its annual presentation staged every year within the Darling Harbour Exhibition Centre and on the waters of adjoining Cockle Bay.

It’s a vitally important exhibition for the Australian boating industry and it stands unchallenged as the biggest recreational boat show in the Southern Hemisphere.

Attendance record for the Sydney event stands at 93,500 (approx), more than double the next best attendance at an Australian boat show and certainly a figure that can stand alongside many international exhibitions.

So how does one ‘measure’ a boat show?

It’s fair to say this could be done in three ways; how large is the venue in which its exhibitors display their goods; how many exhibitors turn out for the show and how many visitors does it attract?

No doubt many on the industry’s front line would rate a boat show’s success (or failure?) by the sales achieved.

This is not an easy figure to arrive at; many exhibitors, particularly manufacturers, have no wish to reveal their sales to opposition and many boats are sold well after the gates have closed, often weeks, even months later.

Generally speaking then, the boating industry worldwide is left to measure a show’s effectiveness and importance by its visitation.

On that basis, the honour of being the world’s largest boat show is a virtual ‘toss up’ between Italy’s Genoa International Boat Show and Germany’s boot Düsseldorf.

Both these shows are massive in scope, each attracting in excess of 250,000 visitors to inspect the goods and services of more than 1500 Sydney International Boat Show website