Column F i n a l A p p ro a c h Inter v iewed by O l i ver Joh n son John Hyde John Hyde has served as the exhibi- tion director of Helitech International — Europe’s largest helicopter exhibition — since 2011. The show has alternated location between London, England, and Amsterdam, the Netherlands, for the last four years, and will return to the RAI Amsterdam from Oct. 11 to 13 in 2016. Vertical: How are plans for Amsterdam coming along? John Hyde: Really well! This is our second trip over to Amsterdam. We were first over there in 2014, and it’s all going really well. V: What drove the decision four years ago to change the format for Helitech? J.H.: Helitech used to run on a biannual basis in Duxford in Cambridgeshire. It was predominantly U.K.-focused, U.K.-based, and most of the exhibitors and visitors were from the U.K. We started working with the European Helicopter Association back in 2011 and they wanted — in conjunction with the major manufactur- ers — to see Helitech become more of an international event and attract a wider international audience. The manufacturers wanted a platform to showcase their lat- est products in Europe rather than always going across to Heli-Expo and the U.S. They always will go to that show because the market size in the U.S. dictates that they do and that is the major show, but they wanted a more international and pro- fessional platform within Europe. Duxford was held in temporary structures in the U.K. countryside, so it was subject to the weather we have over here. You had all sorts of problems with it being too hot with no air conditioning, or it being too wet with muddy fields and the tem- 56 Ver tical M aga zine porary structures collapsing because of the weight of the water on them. We were given some really clear criteria from the major manufacturers — they wanted a city center location, really good network- ing opportunities, good facilities around wherever it’s located, and world class exhibition halls, with the ability to fly in and fly out. Most important was international transport links, because they wanted to drive the international visitor and exhibi- tor base. Hence London, because of the major airports around London, and cru- cially Amsterdam as well — because we looked at a number of different locations in Europe, and Amsterdam Schiphol is the fourth largest international hub in Europe. It’s also a great city to go out in, so it ticked the networking box, and it’s a well- located venue near the center of town. Also, with a rotorcraft event, when you want to fly aircraft in and out, you have to have the full support of the locals — the government, local council, air traffic con- trol, the nearby airport — and we have that in Amsterdam. V: How has it changed over the four years? J.H.: We created the U.S. pavilion in 2014 to showcase U.S. exhibitors, and that’s been a big success. We’ve gone from around 30 U.S. exhibitors to around 50/55. The overall percentage of non- U.K. visitors has grown, as well as our total audience numbers. We had visitors from 65 countries coming to the show in London in 2015. A third of our visitor audi- ence doesn’t go to any other rotorcraft event, which is quite interesting. Bringing it over to Amsterdam has opened it up to other European countries, so we’ve seen more operators attending from the rest of Europe — particularly Eastern Europe, which is an important market. V: What can we expect from the show in 2016? J.H.: The seminar and workshop pro- gram is being revised this year. We’ve listened to the feedback we’ve had from operators in particular, and what they want us to deliver is shorter, sharper, more focused sessions, and some insight sessions to help them understand what business opportunities there are there for them. The safety workshop and business leaders forum will be crucially important this year, and those are the sessions that people do come and sit in and actively take part. So keep an eye on the website for who’s speaking and what the subjects are. New for 2016 are the technical briefings. One of the bits of feedback we got from our operators was that the show is great, but they want more technical informa- tion on the latest products that are being launched — they want to be able to make informed buying decisions while they’re there. So this year, the manufacturers and OEMs will be running their own technical briefings on the latest products that will be on the show floor. It’s a really good interac- tive session for technicians and engineers to learn how these products work and how they’re relevant to their business. V: You’ve obviously been speaking with industry members to prepare for the show — how are they feeling about the industry right now? J.H.: It depends what part of the market you’re from. Our key target audience for the visitor side is operators. We want to drive more operators to come from all over the globe into this event from all the verti- cal market sectors, so we’ve done a lot of research with them. First and foremost, they want to know how they can expand their businesses. A lot of the operators that we talk to are, as we all are, quite time poor, so we have to really give them tangible reasons to spend two days out of the office, when they could and should be doing other things. Quite topical at the moment is how the downturn in the oil-and-gas sector is affecting new aircraft sales and also aircraft values. That’s come back a lot in the research we’ve done. Another issue is attracting the right people into the industry — the right level of pilots and mechanics with the right experience for some of the more complex missions. But, while the oil-and-gas market might be down, helicopter emergency medical services [HEMS] market opportunities