CENTREX International Exhibition Statistics Union, the Central East European exhibition transparency and cooperation organisation held its 20th-anniversary meeting on May 18-20th,2017 in Prague. Beyond revising strategy and communication policy at the General Assembly, the CENTREX union staged the 4th Central East European Exhibition Forum) focusing on the Corporate Social Responsibility among fair organisers in Central East Europe. The objective of the CSR conference was to share experiences and aspirations by public and private fair organizations working for and with local authorities and local civil societies in the region. The Forum was an opportunity to assess changing expectations towards corporate and family business. The Forum dealt with three dimensions of Corporate Social Responsibility: social, economic and towards stakeholders. Relationship between business and society, describing CSR in terms of business operation, interactions with their stakeholders, how these trade fair companies care for progress in civil society – what kind of approaches and fields of support the trade fair companies undertake to fulfill their obligations towards the civil society. Starting with challenges of the changing societies and its impacts relative to CSR at trade fairs, followed by social responsibility in context of working with / for local authorities, best practices of Poznan, the Kielce EXPO City project, concluded by family business assuming corporate responsibility – the Forum went about abundant idea-triggering moments. (A complete sum-up shall be released later.) The Union asked members to commemorate the anniversary with planting tree of CENTREX at their premises. The CENTREX Forum was also dedicated as a pre-launch of series of events of Global Exhibition Day 2017 – CENTREX members have warmly greeted the exhibition community. CENTREX, as transparency guard has published the 2016 Central East European Exhibition Statistics Yearbook: altogether 286 trade fairs have been brought under the audit. The details are available at www.centrexstat.org however some aggregates are showing a positive turn of trend: net exhibition space: 1,580,000 sq.m. – increase of 20 p.c, number of exhibitors: 42,000, number of visitors: 2,800,000 – a massive increase of 20 p.c. on a year-to-year basis. CENTREX General Assembly has re-elected Ms Ildikó Molnár as executive director. Underlining the strategy she has launched a new slogan for CENTREX: “We Love FAIR Fairs!”. In presence of the General Assembly the Polish Chamber of Exhibition Industry handed out the honorary title of Ambassador of Exhibitions to Károly Nagy, earlier director of CENTREX. CENTREX was founded in 1997 at the initiative of the market leader exhibition organisers in Central Eastern Europe. From 1999 the Union is a member of UFI (The Global Association of the Exhibition Industry). CENTREX efforts are aimed at transparent, measurable, internationally acceptable, comparable, audited exhibition statistics, to promote these data and collaboration internationally, and to publish their data open wide in their annual publication and at their website. In 2016 CENTREX Union has 12 leading members in 6 countries of the region – as core companies of collaboration in CEE. Targi Kielce is a member since 2000.
Source: www.centrexstat.org