CENTREX International Exhibition Statistics Union, the Central East European exhibition transparency and cooperation organisation held its 20ieth anniversary meeting on May 19th,2017 in Prague.
Beyond revising strategy and communication policy at the General Assembly CENTREX staged a special Forum (the 4th Central East European Exhibition Forum) focusing on the Corporate Social Responsibility among fair organisers in Central East Europe.
Objective was to share experiences and aspirations by public and private fair organizations working for and with local authorities and local civil societies in the region.
The Forum was an opportunity for assessing changing expectations towards corporate, family business. The Forum dealt with 3 dimensions of Corporate Social Responsibility:
- social,
- economic and
- stakeholders.
Relationship between business and society, describing CSR in terms of business operation, interactions with their stakeholders, how these trade fair companies care for progress in civil society – what kind of approaches and fields of support the trade fair companies undertake to fulfill their obligations towards the civil society.
Starting with challenges of the changing societies and its impacts relative to CSR at trade fairs, followed by social responsibility in context of working with / for local authorities, best practices of Poznan, the Kielce EXPO City project, concluded by family business assuming corporate responsibility – the Forum went about abundant idea-triggering moments. (A complete sum-up shall be released later.) The Union asked members to commemorate the anniversary with planting tree of CENTREX at their premises.
The Forum was also dedicated as a pre-launch of series of events of Global Exhibition Day 2017 – CENTREX members have warmly greeted the exhibition community.
CENTREX, as transparency guard has published the 2016 Central East European Exhibition Statistics Yearbook: altogether 286 trade fairs have been brought under the audit. The details are available at www.centrexstat.org however some aggregates are showing a positive turn of trend: net exhibition space: 1,580,000 sq.m. – increase of 20 p.c, number of exhibitors: 42,000, number of visitors: 2,800,000 – a massive increase of 20 p.c. on a year-to-year basis.
CENTREX General Assembly has re-elected Ms Ildikó Molnár as executive director.
Underlining the strategy she has launched a new slogan for CENTREX: “We Love FAIR Fairs!”
In presence of the General Assembly the Polish Chamber of Exhibition Industry handed out the honorary title of Ambassador of Exhibitions to Károly Nagy, earlier director of CENTREX.