Our focus has always been and will continue to be on delivering a show based on what we have been told visitors want to see. With the exhibitors’ interests in mind, it makes sense for us to create a busy trading platform upon which our exhibitors can maximise their revenue.

For many of our exhibitors, revenue relates directly to footfall and at other consumer shows at Earls Court this is usually downstairs in Earls Court 1. So we have based our positioning of exhibitors on two things: the overall visitor experience, and the exhibitor trading potential.

We will not be using upstairs for exhibitors as we can use downstairs in Earls Court 1 and Earls Court 2. I hope this clarifies our intentions of floor use at Earls Court.

This is a very positive development for the long term success of the Whyte & Mackay Earls Court Boat Show.

We will shortly be announcing dates for the next five years and we are delighted that Whyte & Mackay have shared our vision and extended their sponsorship agreement to five years.

This news is a good indication of the commercial opportunity our show offers all marine based companies to exhibit, and we are looking now to develop our exhibitor list for the 2008 event.’

BB editor Peter Nash says this seems a sound commercial decision from the ECBS. Boating Business, however, would still like to see the exhibitor list for the 2007 event as it would give us all a much better indication of a) whether or not this year’s show will go ahead, and b) an indication of what the show will look like from the identity of the 300+ exhibitors booked to date.

So BB says: ‘Come on James, stop pissing about and tell us who's exhibiting.’