A local event organiser and promoter won the bid to present the next Christmas holiday bazaar and exhibition by placing the highest ever bid price paid for the venue.
Habesha Weekly Promotion won the bid for Addis Abeba Marketing & Development Center by offering 26.2 million Br for 21-day rental of the exhibition space for the 2018/2019 season. Other bidders for the venue included Eyoha Addis Entertainment & Event (Eyoha), founded by Ayu Alemu which offered 21.7 million; and Century Promotion Services, founded by Zewge Jemaneh, offered 21.5 million Br.
The tender for the space rental was floated several months ago by the 35-year old Exhibition Center & Market Development Enterprise, a wing of Addis Abeba Chamber of Commerce & Sectoral Association (AACSA) and operator of the center. Beginning in 2014, the Addis Abeba City, Administration which owns the venue has entered into a 5-year contract with City Chamber to manage the space.
Sitting on 23,000sqm area of land, the centre has three pavilions of different sizes. The first pavilion can hold 90 minimum sized booths, while the second and the third pavilions hold 48 booths each. The open space can also accommodate up to 140 stalls.
The bid opening was held on June 19, 2018, when Habesha Weekly, a company established by Adonic Worku and his wife, placed the highest offer, which was 30pc higher than the 20.15 million Br offered by Century Promotion for the 2017/2018 season last year. The actual price paid by Century Promotion was 39 million Br which included a combined offering for both the Christmas and Easter exhibition events. The offer is also 8.6 million Br higher than Eyoha’s winning price of the 2016/2017 Christmas Holiday Exhibition.
During the financial opening for the Christmas holiday exhibition, the centre was expected to open offers from bidders for the Easter Holiday, as well. However, the bid was cancelled as only a single company made an offer. Eyoha Addis will host the 2018/2019 season New Year Expo, winning the bid for 20.6 million Br.
Century Promotion’s Christmas and Easter holiday exhibition winning the price for the space was four times higher, about seven million Br, than what it paid five years ago. Three years ago Habesha Weekly spent 9.2 million Br to host the New Year Expo, which is four folds lower than the current offer made by the company.
The main reason attributed to the skyrocketing offers for holiday exhibitions is the bidding process, according to Zewge Jemaneh, founder and CEO of Century Promotion, which has been in business for almost two decades.
“The bidding process is too odd,” said Zewge, “there is no technical evaluation and whoever gave higher prices wins the bid.”
Mahlet Teklemariam, organiser of Hub of Africa Fashion Week, and who had been participated in previous bids, also sees the offers made by the companies to be highly exaggerated.
“When prices for renting the centres increase, the pressure will be surely on the companies who wish to promote sales and outreach their customers,” she told Fortune.
Habesha Weekly would likely spend an additional eight to nine million Br for advertisement, promotional materials, bands and musicians, logistics and other expenses, according to insiders in the business.
The city has another venue for exhibitions, Addis Park, a.k.a Millennium Hall, located close to Bole International Airport. It was constructed almost a decade ago by the Ethio-Saudi Arabian tycoon, Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Ali Al-Amoudi. A new exhibition venue is also under construction by the Addis Africa International Convention & Exhibition Center (AAICEC). AAICEC, established by 20 shareholders, which awarded a Chinese firm to construct the centre in the Ayat area of Yeka District.
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