Over 4,000 education professionals from 25 countries attend GESS exhibition

Dr. Hanif Hassan Ali, UAE Minister of Education, has expressed his complete satisfaction with the outcome of the event and looked forward to the event expanding in future.

Dr. Hanif visited again on the last day of GESS and was pleased with the feedback from exhibitors, and was also impressed by the large number of participants who attended the Global Education Forum, a programme of more than 40 workshops and seminars aimed at eduational professionals.

'It is quite satisfying to learn that holding GESS, an event dedicated to the enhancement of the education sector in UAE and neighbouring region, has drawn such a positive response from regional educational professionals, including the private and public sector,' said Virginia Kern, Chairman, Fairs & Exhibitions (F&E), organisers of GESS.

'We have received more than 4,000 education professionals from 25 countries including UAE, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Kenya, Nigeria, Syria and Jordan,' she added.

Consequently, the majority of this year's exhibitors have already confirmed participating in the second edition of GESS which will be held in March 2009, and many have dramatically increased their space requirements assuring a much larger exhibition next year.

'GESS has received an incredibly positive response from local and regional educators and exhibitors. We have received confirmations of participation from current exhibitors at GESS 2009 as well as companies who visited this year in order to assess the success of the event. It will be even better and much bigger next year,' Kern added.

Dr Hanif, UAE Minister of Education visited virtually all the 250 exhibitor stands including Kit for Kids, Skolee and VS Furniture, a German-patented furniture company that is locally made in Sharjah, UAE. Exhibitors attended from 15 nations and included large national pavilions from the UK and Germany.

'Exhibiting at GESS has been a huge success for us, as it gave us an opportunity to demonstrate our services to an impressive number of regional and international visitors. As a direct result of this, we have now appointed various regional distributors and are expanding our business outside the UK for the very first time,' said Lindsay Castling, PR and Marketing Manager, Kit for Kids. 'We will be exhibiting again next year at GESS and have booked a stand four times the size of our current space.'

Romy Haddad, Business Development Manager for Skolee added:

'GESS has been an extremely satisfactory exhibition for us - in addition to our head office Skolee in Lebanon, we are now planning to open new regional offices in the UAE to reach our target market.'

On the second day of GESS Academia Management Solutions International has signed a three million-dirham contract at the show with Edutech to deploy engineering equipment and solutions to AMSI's International School of Arts & Sciences (ISAS) in Al Warqa, Dubai. Many exhibitors reported brisk business and expect to meet their objectives in participating at the show.