The cancellation of the METS Trade yacht equipment show, the world's largest BtoB event in the industry, was announced by its organisers, RAI Amsterdam, on 27 August 2020. We interviewed Fabien Métayer, General Delegate of the Fédération des Industries Nautiques (FIN), who had taken over the management of the French pavilion for the 2020 edition. He went back over the practical consequences for exhibitors and the association's future actions to compensate this loss for the industry.
How do you welcome the decision to cancel METS Trade and what will be the consequences for exhibitors in the French pavilions?
First of all, we regret this new unfortunate decision after the cancellation of the Cannes Yachting Festival and the Grand Pavois. This is bad news for the industry. With the resumption of the organisation (Editor's note: previously managed by the development agency Business France), we had set up not one, but 4 French pavilions at the show and at the last point in the summer, we were quite satisfied in view of the context, with a fill rate of 70 to 80% compared to usual. These figures are higher than a number of other countries.
Concerning the exhibitors, we had committed ourselves to apply the cancellation rules of RAI Amsterdam, the organiser, i.e. a refund of 90% of the deposit, or a postponement to the following year. As the advance payments were still on the account of FIN at the date of cancellation of the METS Trade show, we decided to refund 100% of the advance payments for exhibitors in the French pavilions.
How do you feel about what comes next? What actions do you plan to take to compensate for the cancellation of METS Trade? Can we imagine new BtoB events for the industry, like the one that British Marine is organising in the UK?
We are currently working on other issues with the management of the end of the Cannes cancellation and the preparation of the Paris show. We do not refrain from thinking about other actions depending on the cancellations of other events. The month of September will be decisive in assessing the evolution of the disease and the context for the event. For BtoB events, this is a subject that we are reflecting on with Alain Pichavant (Editor's note: general commissioner of the Nautic and general manager of the Nautic Festival, a subsidiary of the FIN). METS Trade is obviously very international, but there is a need for the sector, even at the French level, to find itself with a little more BtoB. Maybe at the Nautic?
