Irish Golf Expo decided to move this year to a location to hold the event (November 28-29, 2015). The place is in Northern Ireland’s newest and largest exhibition venue at the Eikon Exhibition Centre in Lisburn. Although this is a consumer show (B2C), Irish Golf Expo is thinking about to come up with a golf trade show (B2B) in the future.
The organizers set a really ambitious target of 10 000 visitors, despite of in 2014 they had only 4 000 visitors and cca. 60 exhibitors (e.g. TaylorMade, Bridgestone Golf, TrackMan, Turkish Airlines, Portuguese Tourist Board + local golf clubs, for instance Mount Juliet, Lough Erne Resort).
Irish Golf Expo already has some early bird exhibitors like TaylorMade, Mizuno, Bridgestone Golf. American Golf is signed up to be the Official Club Retailer at the show.
The event’s other objective is to facilitate golf participation. This is really crucial, since there has been a decline in the proportion participating in golf, from 4% in 2011 to 3% in 2013 (I assume there was no big changes last year). GUI’s general secretary, Pat Finn said last year, the highest number golf club membership was around 310,000, but now it is around 235,000.