CES Show Attendance Rebounds After Dip in 2009

The premise of this article is that because attendance was up at CES this year the economy is getting better.  However despite this company attendance was down quite a bit and the quality of the exhibits was also down. 

In fact everything was down.

Case in point: There are several perks that members of the media get when attending CES and one of them is a press luncheon that usually consists of a sack lunch of goodies.  It's not much but a nice touch.

In the past there have always plenty of these lunch boxes and in some cases extras left over well after the close of the luncheon.  However this year the lunches sold out early, like on the order of 15-20 min.  While this article claims attendance was up (which I can attest to) the show budget was down based on the fact that many perks the media members normally get at CES were taken away.

The CEA said more than 2,500 companies exhibited at the show, a figure that would be down from the 2,700 that came last year. Press and blogger attendance may also have been down significantly, from 6,000 last year to somewhere north of 5,000 this year.

It is funny how inaccurate assumptions can be when looking at numbers.  Companies send media folks to cover various events, if media numbers are down and exhibits are down no increased number of attendees will change the fact that there is less to see. 

Heck based on how weak the show was this year I suspect many people will not bother to return next year.

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