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CES Vendors Kicked Out of Hotels For Showcasing Wares in Room
An anonymous reader writes to mention that a number of companies attempting to stretch their dollars by showing their new gear in hotel suites around Vegas during CES were kicked out of the rooms they paid for by CES organizers and hotel staff. According to sources as many as 30 small electronics companies may have been kicked out of The Venetian and The Palazzo on Thursday. One anonymous vendor claims they were coerced into paying $10,000 to the CEA lest they be kicked out of their (paid for) suite and barred from exhibiting or meeting with clients. 'States our source, "I asked the hotel staff if there were any limitations for using the suite. They said the only limitations were how many people were at our parties. They didn't say there were any limitations on displaying product. We set up our product on the first day. Then on Wednesday a cleaning person came in and reported what they saw to management. From there we got kicked out on Thursday."'
"I've never been to any trade show yet where this wasn't the case."
Even companies that have floor space MOST have some sort of suite where the big guys can come in and play with the gear without having to deal with the riffraff.
I'm headed out to a show in a few days in LA that I've been invited to a few...last time I was out there, I thought I was meeting up with the pres of an overseas company to see his products, and it ended up being a suite full of scantily dressed hookers and coke. Only speaking broken Japanese, I apologized to the gentleman as I figured I had the wrong room.
I quickly got the hell out of there...my buddy, however, decided to stick around for a while...turns out it WAS the guy were were supposed to meet!
They had one of the biggest sq ft on the floor, bit there was OBVIOUSLY a reason he needed to have his suite private...kinda wish I had stuck around!
Having stayed at the Venetian the week before CES two years ago, I can say without a doubt that it is usually standard practice to hold meetings in hotel rooms. I had been upgraded to a suite there and the night before I was to check out, hotel staff were removing beds (mattresses and frames) from every room in the same wing and floor I was staying on. I can only imagine that they were going to take the bed from the room I was in as soon as I checked out.
When I used to attend CES in the late 90's through 2002, I was well aware of business meetings as well as parties being held in hotel rooms at most of the nearby hotels. I never received an invite, but the Kentia hall vendors would often have a sign saying, "Come see our presentation in room blah of the [Hilton, Venetian, Sands, etc...]."
I'm thinking this is just CES management shaking down unregistered vendors that are trying to piggyback on the show without paying a share. I could be wrong though.
Mess not in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.
Seconded. I've been to CES a number of times with a wireless startup, and we've always been in suites in the hotels. There's no way they don't know exactly what's going on when they see us roll up in a loaded minivan with boxes that say "Dell" all over them. We chose suites for two reasons: the obvious expense aspect, and there is no way we'd try to demo on the show floor...the RF environment is just too congested. It's also a much nicer way to engage a customer, and gives them a break from the insanity of the floor. I can't imagine that the use of suites will ever go away...CEA will just find a way to drive the cost up.
Having stayed at the Venetian the week before CES two years ago, I can say without a doubt that it is usually standard practice to hold meetings in hotel rooms.
It's the same for NAB. Last time I attended, I had at least four meetings with vendors in hotel rooms where they had demo systems set up for products they weren't ready to announce and were only showing under NDA terms.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
It's pretty obvious to me that if you're paying a premium for showing your product at that show, you don't want 2 bit operations setting up in the hotel rooms above you trying to swindle your viewers up to their private quarters. You're there for those people to see your flashy setup. That's why you pay, isn't it? Management and CES could very well have been protecting the interests and quality of the show. Also, I don't think if CES moved it would hurt Vegas all that much.
That's a pretty crazy exaggeration/analogy. You are practically comparing the 100's of small startup tech companies who rent suites at CES to hookers or swindlers. Nice.
Further, your description is not very accurate. The Las Vegas Convention Center is not a hotel, so there is no "swindling viewers up to their private quarters" - in fact, the hotels that rent the largest number of suites to companies (Venetian, Bellagio, Wynn, etc) are no where near the convention center. Many of these companies have no presence at the convention, so how are they "swindling away" anyone? Many of the meetings/demos are private, have no interest/intention of showing their products in public yet, and have been set up between various parties well in advance, so it's not even taking away revenue from the CEA.
In fact, much of the reason the companies schedule these meetings at CES not to "steal" from the CEA, but simply because that's when all of the executives, press, etc who they want to meet with are in one place at the same time. They save a lot of money and time not having to inefficiently fly everyone around the world for weeks holding one painful meeting at a time. I suppose that is now stealing from the airlines, though...
It is worth noting that the Venetian is also an official CES venue in their convention space so CEA is not just a big pull on the industry, but a big pull on the Venetian for some pretty hefty revenue. This does not take conspiracy theory, this is a corporate entity throwing a small client under the bus to make a gigantic client happy. Standard procedure in big business.
Crikey, hotel suites exist for two purposes. 1, Folk with money who want space, and 2, business people who need space to meet clients without inviting them into their bedroom.
Journalists book suites to conduct interviews, senior business people use them to conduct large transactions. I'd guess in most hotels, suites are used more for business than they are for ordinary guests.
High end audio was in the Venetian for at least 2 years and that meant people had open rooms with the furnature moved to show off speakers and gear. That practice has been going on for decades in hotels and I can't imagine why they would suddenly kick people out unless it was an individual stupidity.
I just got back from CES last night, and this happened to a vendor I had an appointment with.
We were on the 30th floor of the Venetian. The CEA (Consumer Electronics Association, the entity that puts on CES) arranges to take complete floors for things that make noise - they had the 29th, the 30th and the 32nd along with parts of the 34th and 35th and probably others. We make noise, we're selling high end home/corporate theater sound systems and the demos exceed 100 dB at certain points, so combined with the traffic there's no way any regular guest would be happy there. Each room gets a sign to tell other attendees who is there, the doors are generally left wide open and music (and bodies) permeate the hallways all day.
As a point of reference the room cost, paid to the CEA directly, is about $20K for about a week (including setup before the show and teardown afterward), and there are lots of other costs as well. The cost is a serious barrier to entry for smaller firms.
On Friday we were visited by a vendor offering a product that we use and need. I wanted to learn more, and they told me they were just upstairs on the 31st floor, gave me a card with their suite number, and we arranged to get together Saturday morning after a meeting I already had scheduled. I sent them a text message Saturday morning and didn't hear back until their salesman was back in our suite with an explanation.
It turns out that they had managed to book a room on that floor just above other CES exhibitors, had 16 cases of equipment brought up by the hotel staff, and had been bringing people in since the show opened. As they were in the hotel along with the other exhibitors I thought nothing of it and assumed they were just another exhibitor - but it turns our they had not gone through the CEA. Hotel security - and the local Sheriff according to them - took their stuff and them from the room & put them on the curb at 10:00 PM Friday night.
Now in this case they did confess to me that they pulled out the agreement that they signed when they checked in, and that agreement said they would not be making loud noises or conducting business - and they felt that since their products are still in the development stage they didn't count. They were told they had been discovered because they were doing music demonstrations in the room during show hours and people could hear it through the (closed) doors. Since they were not on a floor the CEA had taken 100% of for sound demos it was disturbing other guests and that's how they were discovered.
They ended up in another hotel, where I met them Sunday. I'll be curious to see if they were offered the chance to pay $10K to stay, which is about what a room the size of the one they had would have cost if they booked it properly although they would not have been in the program or on the signs.
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