Meetings and conventions in Hong Kong look and sound incredible
Even for the city of Hong Kong the statistics are fairly breath taking; The Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (HKCEC) offers some sixty six thousand square metres of exhibition space, plus two theatres and a further five thousand seven hundred square metres of multipurpose convention and banqueting facilities. Staging your exhibition is eased by no less than eight freight lifts each with a seven ton capacity, and as if that weren’t enough there are two massive forty five ton container lifts. While not as massive in scale, the HKCEC also boasts its own in-house AV division; twenty specialist technicians oversee a busy department that includes a sizable inventory of audio equipment from d&b audiotechnik.
The d&b Distributor for Hong Kong and mainland China, Sound Work Supplies (SWS), headed up by Daniel Chan, provided all the audio needs of the HKCEC, from microphones to mixer, and recommended the use of elements from the d&b E and T-Series loudspeaker ranges for the largely speech based demands of the centre. “SWS first supplied us with d&b audiotechnik E-Series loudspeakers in 2004 and we have continued to add to our inventory since then with the addition of loudspeakers from the T-Series,” explained Event Facility & Logistics Manager Ekmanson Poon. “We prefer to buy quality systems that sound good, are scalable and are reliable, d&b fit this category perfectly and we normally use them for high profile events.” Mr Poon also values the investment in d&b products for their long term durability, “Unlike projectors, which many clients cannot afford, investments in loudspeaker systems ultimately pay off. We usually replace equipment every five years, but we’re still using the E-Series loudspeakers seven years later.”
The HKCEC is jointly owned by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (TDC) and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Government; the fact that they have invested so heavily in the building and its infrastructure, from really big items like the container elevators to the much smaller but no less significant audio systems, is entirely pivotal to establishing the HKCEC as a premier international convention and meeting centre, and indeed as Asia’s trade fair capital. “The Events Capital of Asia” as HKCEC’s MD Cliff Wallace so rightly says on their website, which is why they have won numerous awards, most recently voted ‘Best Convention and Exhibition Centre in Asia’ two years running (2010 and 2011) at the CEI Asia Industry Awards.
With acknowledgement to PAA for some of the editorial content and photographs.
