Trade Shows comeback with Masks, temperature checks and Covid-19 tests. Booths spaced out, aisles no carpets and floor markings reminding attendees to keep their distance. Hand sanitizers are to stay at the sales booth.

Roughly $11 billion U.S. Trade Show and exhibition industry is slowly coming back to life after a lost year due to coronavirus. A full recovery isn’t expected for about two years and many questions now face organizers.

CES, Consumer Technology Association, went virtual this year and expects to return with a hybrid option in Las Vegas in January 2022.

In the U.S., the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention currently discourages large events and gatherings, citing “extremely high” cases of Covid-19 across the country.

Orlando Tradeshows

The joint gathering of apparel shows in Orlando was a “pilot” to test the effectiveness of precautionary measures at a smaller scale.

Eighteen attendees who took an on-site Covid-19 test outside of the exhibition hall returned a positive result, and those who did immediately left the venue. No other reports of positive cases received after the event.

The trade show was a quick way for a firm to strike 15 sales in a three-day period, even if it required spraying sanitizer on every piece of fabric after a visitor touched it.

Las Vegas Trade Show

Organizers hope to return to Las Vegas this year. An expert group hired by a Trade Association for the events industry is evaluating the apparel shows’ health and safety measures for a report that it plans to submit to government officials including the Nevada governor.

Business travel could pick up in the second half of 2021, but trade shows aren’t expected to rebound to pre-Covid levels until about 2023. That’s partly because restrictions on international travel remain in place.

Appeared on The Wall Street Journal in the March 13, 2021, print edition. Read full story as 'The Trade Show Plots Its Comeback.' By Dave Sebastian