The Geneva motor show has historically been the biggest and the best motor show in the world. In 2024, it will return for the first time in five years with a very different look and feel - both on the show floor and behind the scenes.
For much of the past four years, there has been doubt about whether Geneva would ever return. The last-minute cancellation of the show in 2020 as the pandemic rolled into Europe was enacted in circumstances that left a bitter taste in the mouth of car makers.
Simply, they didn’t get their money back, the venue hosting the show citing ‘force majeure’ (a phrase we all got to know well from March 2020) as the reason, after the Swiss government had ruled that the show couldn't go ahead on public-health grounds.
The show is run by a not-for-profit foundation, but back then, the make-up of the committee running it included those who were working for the venue. Vested interest, much?
Things have changed since. Now the committee is made up of independent members, including representatives of the Swiss automotive industry’s trade body. In the pre-pandemic days, the show actually had only one employee, the managing director, such was the influence of the venue on its running and organisation; but now there's a proper team, employed by the committee to run the show and working only for the show. The relationship with the venue is now that of a contractor: it supplies the halls and the committee pays for them.
Heading the Geneva show is CEO Sandro Mesquita, who took up his position just two months after the 2020 show was cancelled. To say his job has been a difficult one would be putting it mildly, yet after several aborted attempts to get the show back up and running, it will now return.
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