Reaching around 5,000 trade between Perth and Auckland, ENTECH Roadshow finished its 8-show run last week in snowbound Christchurch, having covered 13,746 km, the Tasman Sea and Cook Straight.
NZ was up 17% on the previous, with Australia hitting 27%, and all trade, with no external venue promotion to avoid tyre-kickers. Buyer intention was high, and interests spanned audio, lighting, video, staging, comms and integration. Audio led with a new interactive demo zone featuring 12 PA systems in AU and 8 in NZ, proving to bean audience draw. Further tech sessions ran in the EnTalks Theatres across both nations for the first time.
Australia had 65 stands and NZ 35, both up around 15% on floor space.
The 2027 tour is limited to Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne only, with NZ scheduled every second year. A possible future return to Adelaide is under consideration for 2028, but Western Australia is ruled out without WA Government support.
Stand sales for 2027 have already hit 60% with a new multi brand strategy seeing TAG (for example) branding Martin Audio, QSC, A&H and A.T. stands. With the reduction of cities also comes a reduction of price to exhibit, and show director Kate McKenzie notes the 2027 tour will reach 83% of the buyers whilst costing a lot less for exhibitor travel.
This year saw the successful rollout of Event-Connect software, proprietary built by ENTECH to better handle registrations and QR code scanning. The system runs on any mobile phone and handled almost 5,000 registrations, around 3,000 scans and was run by 400+ exhibitor staff over the 8 shows.
Exhibitor feedback has and is being collected, with a major new initiative under planning to address the growing skills shortage amongst technical crew. More on that will be announced.
