Wind and Water Fair 2018 - photo report

The Wind and Water Fair attracted a large number of visitors. It is estimated that during the 4 days of the event, the 3 exhibitors’ halls were visited by as many as 70,000 people! This is a very good result. The mini diving section, quite strongly advertised on the Internet, was actually a fraction, with a total of over 450 exhibitors.

Even a few days before the start of the fair, some companies from our industry withdrew. It turns out that the rates for the exhibition meter, were lower than for the participation in Underwater Adventure. On top of that, hypothetically, there are many more visitors to the WiW, not related to diving, but looking for new challenges.

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For this reason, the Wiatr i Woda Fair is, in my opinion, a better opportunity to promote diving as such. The announcements that the diving stands would be next to each other did not quite work out, although indeed they were all located at the back of Hall 1, but they were scattered.

Sailors, canoeists and all “fanatics” of water sports (least of all, unfortunately, diving) had plenty of opportunities to see, touch and try the equipment, as well as to observe new solutions. Organizationally it looked good and worked quite efficiently. And above all, as many as 3 halls. The passage took some time, and if you add to this the meeting of friends, it could last several minutes.

Thursday was very quiet almost sleepy in terms of attendance. The first boom took place on Friday, while the epicentre was on Saturday and less on Sunday. To sum up, if anyone went to the fair thinking that there would be a lot of equipment, they were sorely disappointed. If someone wanted a first contact with diving, to find out how to start a new adventure, wanted to set up a diving trip to Croatia, they could be satisfied.

What will happen next year? Is it possible for the organisers of both events to come to an agreement in such a way that an ordinary diver, who does not have any “connections” in the environment, or a person who wants to start diving, would be satisfied with the multitude of equipment offered, the variety of offers from diving centres, or the favourable price for a diving holiday?

Of course, it’s not about negating one or another event or comparing it to, for instance, Boot in Germany. However, looking at our market for several years, it would be useful to have a new quality, some new proposal, a formula that could change it for the better. We need to look for solutions that will attract both people from outside the diving industry, as well as divers. And as you can see, it is not so easy.

Photo: Wojciech Zgoła

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