Thanks to everyone who followed our invitation via email and Twitter to take part in the first-ever independent post-IFSEC survey of visitors and exhibitors. We had just over 100 responses in the week that the survey was online, which we take to be a representative sampling of the people from the industry. The results speak for themselves.
Just over half the people who answered our survey attended the show as a visitor, with 41% attending as an exhibitor, a slight bias toward exhibitors perhaps, which should be borne in mind when reading the results of this survey.
Overwhelmingly, 67% of you said the show was a success, with 36% saying you saw more people than last year and 19% about the same as last year. 31% said they saw fewer visitors and a handful weren’t sure.
We wanted to find out if you thought the move from Birmingham to London was a good thing, so we asked how you compared the facilities at the NEC in Birmingham with the ExCel London, and it’s clear that the more modern ExCel won. Over half rated the NEC as excellent or good while 70% rated the ExCel as excellent or good. Comparing the two venues again, we asked you which was the better venue for IFSEC and 46% of you said the ExCel centre and 33% said the NEC. 20% of you weren’t sure or said they were equally good.
Nearly 60% of you said this year’s show attracted a different type of visitor but 25% of you weren’t sure whether or not it did. Opinion was divided on whether there were more installers or system integrators at the show, but you were more certain that there were more end-users, with 38% agreeing that there were more end-users and 23% saying there were fewer.
There was overwhelming agreement that there were more international visitors, with 53% saying there were more, 16% saying it was about the same as last year and just 9% saying there were fewer.
The education stream was very popular, with 64% saying the quality of the programme was either good or excellent. 31% described it as adequate.
Having said that, attendance at events overall was quite low, with 40% saying they had attended none and 37% saying they attended one or two events. Fewer than one-quarter of you attended three or more events.
Socially, the move to London was popular, with 54% of you saying the social elements were better in London than Birmingham.
However, the cost was an issue, because when we asked for your thoughts on the cost of hotels, restaurants, etc, 66% of you said it was either somewhat too expensive or much too expensive.
31% of you said the cost of attending was definitely worth it, another 31% said it was probably worth it, 21% said it probably wasn’t worth it, 3% said it was definitely not worth it and 14% weren’t sure – so on balance, it seemed to be worthwhile for most of you.
The jury is still out on IFSEC TV, we think, based on your responses. 17% said you watched it one, 21% said you watched it a few times, 16% watched it often (probably because you were on it!) but a whopping
45% ticked the box that said “Not sure – didn’t notice it.” Not surprisingly, 45% of you said you weren’t sure how you would rate IFSEC
TV. Counting just those of you who did watch it at least once, two-thirds of you said it was very good or good while 35% said it was adequate or poor, so perhaps you all wished you had watched more!
There was some crossing of the concourse among IFSEC visitors to have a look at the other shows, with 33% visiting FIREX, 20% going to Safety & Health Expo, 21% to the Facilities Show, 8% to Energy & Environment
Expo and 5% to Service Management Expo.
We at SecurityNewsDesk clearly have some work to do raising awareness of our publication: 57% of you weren’t aware before going to the show that we would have a special newspaper there, so that’s our bad. However, there was clearly a distribution problem as well, because
45% of you didn’t see a copy of it during your visit and 32% chose not to pick up a copy when you did see it.
Again, thanks to all those who took part. Hope to see you next year at IFSEC 2015.
