The Rental Show Tops 6,000 Attendees

March 6, 2018

Total attendance at last month’s Rental Show was 12,066, topping the 12,000 mark for the first time since 2006 in Orlando, Fla., when the American Rental Association was celebrating its 50^th anniversary. The number includes rental attendees plus exhibitor personnel at the New Orleans show.

Rental businesses totaled 2,657 with 6,047 total attendees.

“There is a tone of optimism in the industry,” said Tony Conant, ARA’s CEO. “Everybody I spoke to in the construction segment said the show was as good or better than last year, and it was the largest show floor in 20 years. Many said it was one of the best shows they’ve been to.”

ARA had the opportunity to expand the trade show floor for 2018, adding Hall D, and exhibit space sold out for the sixth straight year. The additional space made 2018 the largest contiguous show floor since 1998 in Orlando.

Next year The Rental Show returns to the West for the first time in six years and to Anaheim, Calif., for the first time in 16 years. Anaheim has hosted The Rental Show seven times previously, between 1973 and 2003. The Rental Show 2019 will be Feb. 17-20 at the Anaheim Convention Center.

About the Author

Michael Roth

Editor

Michael Roth has covered the equipment rental industry full time for RER since 1989 and has served as the magazine’s editor in chief since 1994. He has nearly 30 years experience as a professional journalist. Roth has visited hundreds of rental centers and industry manufacturers, written hundreds of feature stories for RER and thousands of news stories for the magazine and its electronic newsletter RER Reports. Roth has interviewed leading executives for most of the industry’s largest rental companies and manufacturers as well as hundreds of smaller independent companies. He has visited with and reported on rental companies and manufacturers in Europe, Central America and Asia as well as Mexico, Canada and the United States. Roth was co-founder of RER Reports, the industry’s first weekly newsletter, which began as a fax newsletter in 1996, and later became an online newsletter. Roth has spoken at conventions sponsored by the American Rental Association, Associated Equipment Distributors, California Rental Association and other industry events and has spoken before industry groups in several countries. He lives and works in Los Angeles when he’s not traveling to cover industry events.