The 12th Kansai Hotel & Restaurant Show took place at INTEX Osaka, alongside five other concurrent exhibitions in July. Photo Credit: Osaka Convention & Tourism Bureau
OSAKA — The 12th Kansai Hotel & Restaurant Show took
place at INTEX Osaka last week (29-31 July), alongside five other
exhibitions. A total of 460 companies at 830 booths filled the venue,
marking the first large-scale B2B trade event since Japan lifted its
national state of emergency.
The events implemented new 'Infectious Disease Control
Measures' announced by the Osaka Convention & Tourism Bureau in
June. The bureau also assisted organisers throughout the event to ensure
the new operational measures were properly implemented. These included:
Using a web-based pre-registration system to control the date and time of attendance of visitors
Introducing Osaka Prefecture’s COVID-19 Tracing System
Installing thermographic camera and implementing temperature checks of all attendees at the entrance
Setting up a dedicated quarantine space with medical staff
Placing social distancing markers (of 1 metre) within the venue as well as in adjoining facilities
Changing the venue layout to widen aisles to at least 3 metres (where they are normally 2 metres)
Installing clear panels at speaker podiums, placing
seats at least one meter apart in front and behind each other, and
changing the layout of seminar rooms to avoid closed spaces.
As a mark of the government's ongoing support of MICE
industry revival, 15 representatives from the Osaka prefectural
government attended the event's opening ceremony. Osaka Convention &
Tourism Bureau president Hiroshi Mizohata, said: “By firstly holding
Japan’s first major exhibition amid the coronavirus pandemic, we want to
send a big, encouraging shout to those concerned about exhibitions and
international meetings held across Japan.”
Seminars on the bureau's Infectious Disease Control
Measures were also held throughout the event, where MICE policy director
Yoshikazu Tanaka took the stage to explain the guidelines. The
discussion was also broadcast online.
The guidelines, targeted to event organisers, were drafted
under the guidance of Osaka City University’s Tetsuo Kase of the
Department of Public Health in the School of Medicine, who also
explained the changes that event organisers can expect during the
“[living] with-corona” era.