NATPE Counting Down To Miami Beach

If you’re planning to attend NATPE and stay at the Fontainebleau Resort in Miami Beach where the annual conference in being held, you’re out of luck.

NATPE’s bloc of 1,800 rooms at the resort and the nearby Eden Roc Renaissance is sold out, said NATPE President Rick Feldman during a teleconference this afternoon.

But, he added, NATPE has lined up another 200 discounted room a little further up Collins Avenue at the Grand Beach Hotel and, of course, there are plenty of other hotels in Miami Beach.

‘Things are looking pretty good,” said Feldman.

“From all evidences we sort of have a new lease on life here and we are doing everything in our power to make sure that when people leave they’re going to say the money and time was well spent,” he added.

Feldman said more than 80% of suite space at the Fontainebleau is booked and that nearly all the floor exhibition space is sold out.

NATPE expects more than 500 buyers from more than 40 countries will attend and all of the major TV studios will be represented, according to Feldman.

“I am happy to say Sony and Disney, which last year, have been sort of out of the wilderness, have come home,” he said. “We are greatly appreciative.”

Feldman was talking about Sony International, not Sony Domestic Television.

With just seven weeks until the Jan. 24-26 event, he said, registration is “way ahead” of where it was last year.

There were roughly 5,000 people at NATPE 2010 in Las Vegas.

While Feldman is optimistic about attendance, he didn’t want to make any predictions.

“I tend to believe we won’t end up way ahead of last year and that we’ll probably be about where we were, maybe a little bit ahead.”

But he also says TV stations groups like CBS, Cox, Hearst, Post-Newsweek, LIN Media, Univision, Tribune, Weigel, Meredith and ABC are stepping up their NATPE attendance by sending “multiple people.’’

Among the conference highlights, Feldman said, are a Monday (Jan. 24) keynote address by Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP, the world’s largest advertising and marketing services, and the presentation Tuesday (Jan. 25) of the Brandon Tartikoff Legacy Awards to Dick Ebersol, Mary Hart, Regis Philbin and Gerhard Zeiler.

Feldman said attendees can also take part in a “Advertising Innovation Track” on Wednesday (Jan.26) that will bring media buyers, production companies, studios and ad solution companies together.

Feldman also believes that NATPE attendees will find the logistics at the Fontainebleau Resort a significant improvement over the conferences held over the past several years at the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas.

“We wanted to keep everything on one floor of the hotel and not have people going all over the place.”