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Barnett to open new innings at EIBTM

Paul Colston visits Reed Travel Exhibitions (RTE) HQ in Richmond. He finds Graeme Barnett is padding up for his first innings as show director of EIBTM and RTE busily devolving operational power to its teams in the global meetings field.

Show director of EIBTM 2010, Graeme Barnett, says he was tempted into the events industry at Reed’s 1995 edition of Hotelympia. “I was then an advertising director on catering titles at Morgan Grampian and came to the show and thought “What fun, I like the look of this as a potential career.”
Barnett moved to work on food and drink shows before going into project planning for Reed, when the company became a founding partner of the then fledgling Excel venue.
Barnett is a former England Under-21 hockey international and accomplished cricketer, but opening the batting for the Excel project, he admits, was a challenge.
It was one that left him with a strong affinity for Excel and says it is good to see the new International Convention Centre (ICC) launched, “particularly after the four ‘founding’ organisers in the early days made such a commitment.”
Barnett, who later played a key role at the World Travel Market, was part of Fiona Jeffery’s team when the show made the 2002 transition from Earls Court to Excel.
“It took a lot of courage to make that move. I remember us standing on the balcony overlooking the docks for the show’s firework gala. At the time it was probably the biggest event yet at Excel and many of the team were in tears. We thought that if we can make this work at Excel, then the venue would work. The show daily’s headline said it all: ‘Vindicated!’.”

G & C
Barnett says the Excel experience helped him to expect the unexpected; useful when launching RTE’s Gulf meetings show, GIBTM in 2007. The show was only the second exhibition to use the new ADNEC facility in Abu Dhabi, following the big IDEX defence show. Dealing with late date changes to the inaugural show and Olympic pressure on dates in Beijing with RTE’s China show, CIBTM, certainly helped steel the launch director. CIBTM’s 2010 edition opens at the end of the month, with Barnett handing over the reins to locally-based Jeffrey Xu. Barnett’s two shows, ‘G’ & ‘C’ serve very different markets, he notes. “The industry in China is evolving and is massive, while the Gulf is evolving in a different way. In Abu Dhabi, there is a merging of local and international flavours.”

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