Work to remodel Stockholmsmässan’s entrance enters final phase

It’s time again: Stockholmsmässan’s main entrance will be turning back into a busy building site for the next few months. This is the final phase of building work and on 14 August – just one day before the first exhibition of the fall opens – the gleaming new entrance area will be finished.

As the Nordic region’s largest exhibition and congress center, Stockholmsmässan has a high level of ambition when it comes to offering visitors, exhibitors and organizers an inspiring and functional meeting place. When a major project to remodel the main entrance got under way last year, its purpose was to enhance the level of those two particular aspects: Inspiration and function.

“People attending one of our events, regardless of whether it’s an exhibition or a conference, should be in a good mood before they’ve even stepped through the doors. Clearly, the entrance is the visitor’s first impression of the venue and we want the positive experience to start there. Many of our competitors elsewhere in Europe have invested heavily in their venues in recent years and we need to keep up to be able to be a good choice in the future as well,” comments Stockholmsmässan’s CEO Patric Sjöberg.

As far as function goes, the main concern has been to improve logistics at times of heavy visitor flows and parallel events in the building – when exhibitions coincide with a congress or other large meeting, for instance. The new entrance will make it easier for visitors to understand where to go and avoid colliding with visitors attending other events. The entire entrance area is also being roofed over, which has been on our wish list for some time.

Consideration for our visitors also explains why building work has been carried out in two phases. Fall-winter-spring is our most intensive exhibition season at Stockholmsmässan, which is why we decided to carry out building work over two consecutive summers rather than all at once. Summertime is usually congress season – international congresses in particular prefer visiting Stockholm when the city is at her loveliest – but with relatively few major congresses scheduled in 2012 and 2013, it seemed a good idea to carry out the building work in this time frame.

“If we hadn’t seized this opportunity, we’d have had to wait a very long time as we have major congresses scheduled in summertime from 2014 onwards, so this was the ideal time to fit in the building work. There will inevitably be some impact on the small and medium-sized events being held this summer, but we will do our very best to make sure both they and our hotel guests will be inconvenienced as little as possible. Our building contractor is used to working with Stockholmsmässan and together we’ve worked out a meticulous timetable of the best time to carry out various elements of the building work,” explains Patric Sjöberg.

Remodeling work on the entrance area covers about 2,200 square meters and is expected to be completed by 14 August. The architects are Rosenbergs Arkitekter and the building contractor is Värmdö Bygg.

For more information, please visit www.stockholmsmassan.se/visitor/new-main-entrance, or contact:

Patric Sjöberg, CEO Stockholmsmässan, +46 70 789 43 02, patric.sjoberg@stockholmsmassan.se

Patrik Lindh, CEO Värmdö Byggentreprenader AB, +46 8 574 102 15, patrik.lindh@varmdobygg.se

Helena Nilsson, Communications Director Stockholmsmässan, +46 70 789 44 19, helena.nilsson@stockholmsmassan.se