Espoo Housing Fair attracts fewer visitors than expected

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The Housing Fair in Espoo's Kauklahti district, which is to end this Sunday, seems likely to fail to reach its original audience targets. The objective was to attract 200,000 visitors, explains project manager Seppo Kallio from the City of Espoo. The total number of visitors is estimated to reach something like 160,000.
      At closing time on Tuesday evening, 133,636 guests had been to inspect the latest trends in Finnish housing.
      "We are surprised by the only moderate figure", Kallio admits.
     
Owing to the agreement worked out between the organisers - the City of Espoo and the Finnish Housing Fair Co-operative Organisation - the city is likely to receive only a minute cut of the gate money.
      The agreement guarantees the Finnish Housing Fair Co-operative Organisation the proceeds from the first 160,000 tickets sold, and the City of Espoo that from the next 30,000. After 190,000 visitors the ticket revenue will be split fifty-fifty.
      In recent years the number of housing fair visitors has been in the region on 190,000. Some had speculated that the siting of the fair in the densely-populated Greater Helsinki area might have boostede attendances this time.
     
Espoo has invested around EUR 14 million into the project. The City of Espoo Technical Services Director Olavi Louko points out that the Kauklahti area would have been developed in any case, and the selling of the plots alone brings EUR 15 million into the city's coffers.
      Had the audience target been reached, Espoo still would have made only EUR half a million at the most. "A hundred thousand euros here or there does not mean much in the city's budget", Louko comments.
     
For the Finnish Housing Fair Co-operation Organisation, the sluggish Espoo fair attendance figures are not a cause for worry, either.
      Managing director Pasi Heiskanen predicts that the combined proceeds from the 200,000 visitors to Espoo and the Holiday Housing Fair in Koli will allow the organisation to turn a profit.


Links:
  Housing Fair in Espoo
  Holiday Housing Fair in Koli

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