PROPERTY SHOW PROVED HARD WORK, NOT A JOLLY!
01 April 2008
An insight into MIPIM by Russel Rigby. "From March 12 to 14, myself and 26,000 others attended MIPIM, the world's largest property show held in Cannes.
It was my first visit to this event, supporting a delegation from Derby, together with a number of public and private sector representatives from across the East Midlands.
Since returning to Derby, my inbox and the Evening Telegraph's letters page have been liberally sprinkled with observations implying that Cannes was an excuse for a holiday and that the public purse shouldn't have contributed to funding "a jolly".
Everyone is entitled to their view but let me use this column to set the record straight.
Hard work? Very, very hard work. To attract the maximum benefit from MIPIM you need stamina and endurance, and the ability to shake hands and retain that "perma-smile" all day, every day.
Days between 18 to 20 hours were the norm. Remember that many private sector delegates from Derby have spent several thousand pounds each in sorting accommodation and gaining entry to the main event.
Unfortunately, prices for travel, accommodation and hospitality across the board were massively inflated and that investment put understandable pressure on the individuals involved to become totally immersed in what was going on.
Why bother? Well, for several years I had sidestepped going to MIPIM, believing that it seemed very far removed from my own commercial property world in Derby.
Two factors, however, strongly influenced my thinking this year, thus making my mind up about going to Cannes. First, the Marketing Derby juggernaut is now quite rightly gaining national recognition. At its core is an unswerving desire to raise the external perception of Derby, making its offer distinctive and to make sure that it punches its weight as a location for doing business and attracting investment.
Secondly, and apologies because I have raised it before in this column, this next phase of city centre regeneration is so, so critical. The successful delivery, completion and occupation of the proposed new office developments for Derby city centre will make or break Derby Cityscape's emerging Masterplan.
With so many local businesses having already relocated in recent years, these proposed developments will not be filled by Derby-driven demand alone. Instead we need to attract inward investment.
Understandably, many of the decisions which control the choice of location for footloose investors is made by decision makers located in the core cities but specifically within London, the South East and, increasingly, in Europe.
An opportunity to work in a team and showcase Derby's best attributes to those individuals was too good an opportunity to miss.
Derby City Council's role in supporting a team in Cannes has, in my opinion, been very harshly criticised. I do not always see eye to eye with Derby City Council but could not help but be impressed by the genuine hard work put in by certain individuals and believe me, when you are competing alongside hundreds of other cities and regions, it does give you as a delegate a massive reassurance when you are able to introduce the leader of the city council to a potential investor who has been previously fobbed off by lower ranking civil servants.
Put simply, you had to be there to see it.
Finally, and I know any readers in Nottingham or Leicester will not like this, but the Derby team and the Derby-sponsored event were the undoubted highlights for me of the whole East Midlands Delegation. We really seemed to want it a little bit more.
That's the lesson for next year and I would strongly urge all bondholders and would-be bond holders to get behind Derby's 2009 MIPIM initiative.
The only alternative is to do what dozens and dozens of Baltic states did and spend millions and millions of Euros having the largest hoardings, the most lavish presentations and ultimately populated by vacuous, albeit visibly pleasing, young blonde ladies resident to those countries.
Now there's a thought."
Aricle Courtesy of Derby Evening Telegraph