Outdoor Retailer 2008: the Energy Solutions Arena is bad for exhibitors

Nielsen Business Media produces the Outdoor Retailer show. OR has been in Salt Lake City for 12+ years, and the only convention center of any size here is the Salt Palace, which is no longer big enough to contain the outdoor industry's many exhibitors. Nielsen's policy is to place exhibitors based on seniority - the longer you've been exhibiting with OR, the better your placement. Since the show is now too big for its britches, Nielsen's remedy has been to expand across a city street to the Energy Solutions Arena, home of the Utah Jazz basketball team, and place the newest exhibitors there. This is a bad idea, executed poorly.

Here's the main hall:

1. The floorplan provided to exhibitors before the show and now posted in the main hall makes it appear as if the ESA is an offshoot room of the main hall, when it's a 1-4 block walk, depending on where you leave the main hall.
2. The signage is infrequent and poor. There's no signage in the main hall directing you how to best exit the hall to get to the ESA. There's no signage on sidewalks. The ESA is not visible from 75% of the main hall exit doors. The ESA has a bunch of gates and construction barriers that are confusing.
   
3. If you make it to the ESA building, there's only one set of doors to get in. When you enter the ESA, you are one floor above the show floor. There are only two (poorly signed) access points to the show floor from the entrance and you have to walk by some exhibitors. Some might not realize there's a show floor off the concourse.
   

Worst yet, we've paid the same amount for booth space as exhibitors in the main hall. We definitely feel like second-class exhibitors.

Visitors can take stairs or an elevator from the concourse to the show floor. Should you take the stairs, you'd have this view on the way done:

Here's the extremely inviting and well-signed hallway from the elevator.


There is good news, though. As its a pro sports arena, the lighting is bright!

Since all the exhibitors in the ESA are new, we've got kind of a hodge podge of neighbors. Like these fine folks immediately to our left:

And this endurance sports fridge-freezer maker: