The Consumer Technology Association plans to hold CES 2021 in person next year, bringing he enormous, sprawling, jam-packed tech convention to Las Vegas. CTA has announced that it intends to give exhibitors a way to showcase their products “both physically in Las Vegas and digitally.”
CES brought around 175,000 attendees to Las Vegas last year. The Las Vegas Convention Center, the primary venue where the event is held, is scheduled to complete a $980 million expansion just in time.
As reported in The Verge, the CTA promises new health policies for the show. The group intends to “regularly clean and sanitize spaces” and offer “sanitization stations.” It also plans to widen aisles and seats to increase distancing, limit “touch points” by using tech like mobile payments, and provide on-site health services. The CTA says it’ll look into doing temperature scans and that it plans to issue “best practices,” like wearing a mask — though it doesn’t say if they’ll be required.
Here’s the text from CTA:
Planning for CES 2021 is underway. Once again, we are focused on bringing you the most influential tech event in the world. Major brands are committed for the show, and we look forward to announcing another slate of top-tier speakers.
While we plan to produce another in-person event in Las Vegas, we all face new considerations around attending conferences, conducting business and traveling to meetings. Just as your companies are innovating to overcome the challenges this pandemic presents, we are adapting to the evolving situation. And we want to ensure CES continues to help you make the connections you need to grow your business and your brand.
For CES 2021, we will continue to expand the show’s digital reach. You can expect to see a wider selection of livestreamed CES content, along with many other engaging digital and virtual opportunities, enabling you to connect with the world’s leading technology innovators, thought leaders and policymakers. We will showcase our exhibitors’ products, technology breakthroughs and ideas to the world, both physically in Las Vegas and digitally.
Your safety, security and health are always a priority at CES, and we continue to evaluate and expand the measures we put in place. We are working closely with the Las Vegas community, including the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority and hotels venues, as they develop and implement their re-opening plans. We are also working with leading event industry associations as they develop their best practices. And we will ensure our plans follow the recommendations of public health experts and standards set by the federal, state and local governments.
Among our new plans for CES 2021:
- Regularly clean and sanitize spaces across the show venues and provide sanitization stations throughout;
- Better enable social distancing, including widening aisles in many exhibit areas and providing more space between seats in conference programs and other areas where attendees congregate;
- Issue best practices for attendees, such as wearing masks and avoiding shaking hands, and for exhibitors on product demonstrations;
- Limit touch points throughout the facilities including through cashless systems for purchases and transactions;
- Evaluate solutions for contactless thermal scans at key venue entry points;
- Provide enhanced on-site access to health service and medical aid.
These measures are just a sampling of what we plan for CES 2021. The meetings world is developing and implementing best practices, and we will assess and evaluate the latest solutions in the coming months. We will continue to work with our venues in Las Vegas, update our plans and share them with you.
For CES 2021, we will highlight technologies that help provide solutions for some of the day-to-day challenges created by the pandemic. We are encouraged that the collaboration of technology and medicine will create innovative solutions and save lives. And we believe events such as CES that bring thought leaders and innovators together to solve these challenges will be more important than ever.
Thank you for your support during what is an uncertain time for all of us. We will continue to provide updates and always appreciate hearing from you directly.
