he 2003 Atlantic City Pool & Spa Show has 408 registered exhibitors — a record-breaker for the New Jersey show.
“It’s the greatest show we ever will have had,” said Joel Caesar, executive director of the Northeast Spa & Pool Association, which organizes the show. “It’s all shaping up very nicely.”
The prior record of 403 exhibitors was set in 2001. The upcoming show, which runs Jan. 28-30, had to have its floor configuration changed twice to allow for more exhibitors. Without the changes, the show would have sold out by mid-October.
“Booth sales are at a record pace,” Caesar said. “We’ve been adjusting this thing since early September.”
So far, booth sales apparently have not suffered from the continuing trend of manufacturer mergers and acquisitions. “Those companies involved in recent mergers or acquisitions are still retaining individual identities,” Caesar said.
NESPA now has its sights set on attendee registration. While the organization hasn’t begun crunching those numbers, Caesar said he sees more attendees registering through the Internet.
To attract more attendees earlier, he and Deputy Executive Director Paulette Pitrak have scheduled additional seminars on Monday, Jan. 27. To accommodate these classes, the Certified Pool Operator course was moved to Sunday.
The show also will feature two symposia. One will cover the conservation of pool water to mitigate drought conditions. The other, co-sponsored with the National Swimming Pool Foundation, will examine research on chloroform generation in outdoor pools, as well as a comparison of water-testing methods, plaster etching and response characteristics of probes under fouling conditions and suction entrapment.
