Chapter 5
James Wyatt hits New Orleans – joining 30,000 realtors for NARdi Gras!
There are three gatherings during the year that are well worth attending if you are (or are looking to be) in the overseas sales market. SIMA in Madrid is the world’s biggest property
exhibition covering an area 50% bigger than London’s ExCel Halls. With 800 exhibitors and 160,000 visitors from 60 countries, it is busy! Hugely worth visiting to see the staggering size and variety of stands which are quite often on two levels (display downstairs, bar upstairs), and usually built specifically for the show and then demolished! I’ve heard of developers spending €500,000 on a stand.
OPPLive! held it’s first B2B show last December and it is being repeated next month at Alexandra Palace on a grander scale. This was a brilliantly run two day event giving developers, agents, foreign exchange specialists etc the opportunity to network without the ‘complication’ of
‘Joe public’.
Lastly, The National Association of Realtors (NAR) in America hold their annual convention each year in a different city. This year, nearly 30,000 of us headed out to New Orleans – devastated in August 2005 by Hurricane Katrina and flooding – and NARdi Gras.
Thursday
Not a good start at Gatwick. I’ve got an iPod earbud firmly wedged in my ear, and a supervisor thinks I should go to hospital – “the ambulance will get you there in no time”. Slight panic on my part as the plane leaves in 40 minutes. Fortunately, common sense prevails. A paramedic turns up and extracts the offending thing with a pop.
Someone kindly takes pity on me and my pathetic earbud story, and moves me up to a giant seat at the front of the plane for the day trip to Philadelphia and then on to New Orleans.
Friday
Wide awake at 4am. I eventually decide to head into town on the tram for an early breakfast. First sign of Hurricane Katrina – there are no trams as the power lines were blown away.
Eventually find the Ernest Morial Convention Center which is a colossal 3 million square foot building beside the River Mississippi (and they’re about to add another 500,000 sq ft). One
end to the other is nearly three quarters of a mile long. That’s fine, but most of the meetings/lectures I have are at one end of the building, and the exhibition stands and food court are at the other end. Note for tomorrow – bring more comfortable shoes!
The day is spent at various meetings with gripping titles including “Top money making strategies in Online Marketing”, “Increase your Profits with Global Referrals!” and “Partnering
with Developers in the Second Homes Market”.
Later in the day, the exhibition is ‘officially’ opened by Tom Stevens, President of the NAR with lots of American hoo-ha. 800 exhibitors enthusiastically hand out thimble full sized drinks – not enough for any effect whatsoever. Fortunately the NAEA cocktail reception at the Sheraton lures us for proper sized drinks. Joint hosts are the Real Estate Institutes of New Zealand and Australia. Big-wigs from the UK include NAEA Chief Executive Peter Bolton King, President Charles Smailes and NAEA International supremo Ian Tonge. Other notables included Aussie
Marketing guru Ian Grace who talked at the NAEA Congress in London last year as well as brilliant motivational speaker Julie Ryan who I hope the NAEA will get over to the UK soon.
Saturday
Another lovely sunny day – absolutely perfect for being couped up in windowless meeting rooms. Today is mainly spent at the International Networking Center discussing opportunities with developers from Brazil, Mexico, Portugal, Spain, Bahamas, Panama, USA and Nicaragua
for some reason (apparently it’s really safe there now...). I bump into an old friend Kirkor Ajderhanyan who runs a hugely successful agency on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice. Being
from France he embraces me and plants a kiss on each cheek, which freaks out the Americans standing around us. Immediate discussion about “my wife and kids at home…” to ensure they
knew what was what.
Peter Knight who runs Phoenix plc (PR firm for the NAEA) is one of the speakers at a session entitled “Innovative Marketing Strategies from around the World”. His 25 minutes go down very well, and part of his presentation mentions me. He also points me out to the other delegates. At the end of the session there is a long queue (I’m not joking!) of people want to meet me. 45 minutes later, I have a load of cards, of which two or three may well be profitable. Thank-you Peter!
Later, 6000 of us jam into a hall with a massive stage for various award ceremonies, followed by a talk by ex-Presidents Bush and Clinton about their Bush/Clinton Katrina Fund which has raised $130m to ease the suffering of those caught by the devastating hurricane and flooding. George Bush was very funny (“let me tell you about the time I threw-up on the President of
Japan” etc), whilst Clinton played the straight man.
The evening is spent in Bourbon Street in the NAR ‘NARdi Gras’ parade passing by all the pubs, bars, music halls, strip joints etc. This attractive part of town has buildings in the French Colonial style – decorative wrought ironwork supporting balconies from which hundreds of ‘merry’ well-wishers hurl string beads at us. Ouch.
Sunday
Business starts a bit later today, so I head off for a walk into town. The old town was built above sea level and whilst Katrina did a lot of damage – windows blown in, trees blown away – it missed out on the flooding. This tourist area is largely back to normal. But I didn’t have to go far to find shopping Malls where half the shops were still empty, collecting dust. The Malls’ food hall had three of 15 counters open. Once you get into the badly flooded areas, it becomes a lot, lot worse. Street after street virtually abandoned. House after house still uninhabitable. This was a city of over 800,000 people before the August 2005 storm, and 15 months later, less than 200,000 are living here full time. It is a city which is slowly dragging itself off it’s knees, but these are still early days.
30,000 Estate Agents will have dropped $40m into the local economy over a few days – it is the biggest convention since Katrina. We followed the 2006 Librarians convention, which one shopkeeper described to me as being ‘a little quiet’!! Everywhere you went, bar tenders, shopkeepers, restaurateurs, bell-boys – everyone thanked us for coming to New Orleans.
Back to work and the rest of the day spent talking to exhibitors and developers. Anyone know of anyone interested in investing in El Salvador?! The convention was rounded off by a wonderful concert by Harry Connick JR, who is a New Orleans boy – remember his music from “When Harry met Sally”?
Monday
Time to head home. Bump into NAEA President Charles Smailes in the bar at the airport and we chat about the last few days. 44 Brits made it to New Orleans. 250 South Africans came, a similar number from Australia and 150 from New Zealand. Lets have more Brits in Las Vegas
next year! There are a huge number of opportunities and ideas to be had from the NAR convention. I’ve brought back plenty to keep me busy for some time and eventually good fees will pay back the cost of the trip many times over.
James Wyatt MNAEA, MARLA, TRC, REALTOR ® is a partner at Barton Wyatt International based in Wentworth, Virginia Water. Tel: 01344 843000
