TPLBS attendance down over first weekend
Tamara Ecclestone with her Maldives suntan. Not sure what the blokes were doing there… photo: onEdition
TPLBS: Press Day at the Tullett Prebon London Boat Show was nicely busy with what seemed to be a lot more new product launches than least year’s show, writes Peter Nash.
It was also nice to see visitors in the South Hall by 10.30 gathering to see the show opening. Unfortunately, the opening was being done on the Tullett Prebon stand in the South Hall.
The stand had a central feature of a glass wall with water cascading down it. There was access either side, but every available inch was taken by hordes of photographers. They were standing on stools and ladders, each trying to get the best view and get as close as they could to Tamara Ecclestone.
As a result, few ‘ordinary’ people got anywhere near her. But she wasn’t there for the ordinary show visitors. She was there to attract the photographers to get loads of images on the broadcast media and loads of column inches in the Saturday ‘papers to make sure everyone in the country knew the Tullett Prebon London Boat Show was on at ExCeL.
According to Rebecca Jackson, PR manager for the British Marine Federation (BMF) and show organiser National Boat Shows (NBS), it was a busy day in the media centre with just under 500 journalists and some great resulting coverage.
The coverage included Friday morning on BBC Radio 4’s The Today Programme and BBC Breakfast, plus pieces on BBC South, ITV London Tonight, ITV Meridian and BBC South West at lunchtime and in the evening.
Saturday morning’s papers had boat show content in the Financial Times, The Times, The Daily Telegraph, Daily Express and The Guardian with the Daily Mail Online carrying photos of Tamara Ecclestone opening the show.
During the first day, Clipper Ventures said its Round the World Yacht Race is worth more than £5m to the regional economy. Chairman Sir Robin Knox-Johnston said the construction of a new fleet of 12 Clipper 70 yachts, with an option for a further four, was progressing on schedule in China and Qingdao has signed up as a race sponsor until 2016.
The current race finishes back in Southampton in July, five days before the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games.
Jeckells The Sailmakers celebrated its 180th anniversary with Chris Jeckells – whose Great, Great, Great, Great Grandfather founded the company in 1832 - reckoning he’d spent two and a half years of his life at boat shows.
Among the guests were long standing Jeckells customers, Paul and Rachel Chandler, who were kidnapped off their boat Lynn Rival and held captive by Somali pirates for over a year.
The Yachting Monthly Crash Test Boat is turning out to be a major attraction at the show, with astonished visitors looking at the mangled remains of the boat that has been capsized, lost her rig and been blown up by the Navy – all in the best possible taste, of course.
The second hand 40ft Jeanneau Sun Fizz 40 was used to test theories about what to do in a disaster scenario and give sailors an idea how they could handle such disasters.
At Princess, Chris Gates said it was going to be a tough year as he launched the new V57 and the 'aggresively priced' new V39. He also said the new 40M is coming along nicely for its spring launch.
Nick Heyes said Marine Electronic Services (MES) and Cactus Navigation have been sold and are now to be known as Cactus 020. Andrew Smythe, a director of the previous company, will be heading up the new company.
Mr Heyes told Boating Business he’s now looking after Digital Yacht and wants to win the DAME Award again, so he’ll be producing lots of new products.
“There are lots of products out there that could be better and we can do that. We’ve taken AIS to the next level with our AIS Life Guard that doesn’t just come up with an AIS target, it sounds an alert to notify the crew of the MOB.”
Attendance down
It was a pity to see the attendance figures for the first three days at 28,407, which is 12% down on last year. But there’s a long way to go yet…
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