More Than 115.000 Visitors at the Milan Bike ShowMilano

MILANO, Italy - The 2005 EICMA Milan bike show opened with record number of floor space (+25%) and more exhibitors (+16%), and closed four days later with another unexpected record number of visitors. Right from the start of the 2005 show it was clear to see the huge numbers of visitors in the new Milan exhibition centre and the crowds on Saturday and Sunday pushed the overall number of visitors to two new records. On Saturday the number of visitors was 45% higher than Saturday last year, while by Sunday lunchtime almost all the tickets for the day had been sold and more had to be quickly printed. The total number of visitors to the four days of the show reached 115,000 with an increase of 10% compared to 2004.“Our first analysis of the event has to start from these important and very comforting statistics,” Costantino Ruggiero, the General Director of the EICMA association said.“Another successful aspect of the show is the interest for the many extra events, especially the “Great night of the Bike’ event in the central Milan shopping district of Corso Buenos Aires. The talk show organised by well-known sports journalists Marino Bartoletti was also appreciated by the show visitors and the enormous space given to the show by the media confirm the success of this year’s event.”“Obviously in the next few days we’ll work on the things that weren’t as successful. We’ll investigate to see what happened, and act to improve things for 2006.”After a packed weekend, Monday’s final day of the show allowed more business deals to be done. The big star was Italian champion Damiano Cunego who celebrated his 24th birthday with a pink giant cake at the Gazzetta dello Sport stand.