The last seven consumer events held by London-based organiser Clarion Events have seen a rise of 18% in overall attendance.

So although popular opinion continues to suggest that exhibition industry attendances are in decline, there's clearly a subsector that isn't – and that's the more creative and experiential consumer shows.

In total, over 193,000 consumers, 30,000 more than last year, attended Music Live, MPH London and Birmingham, Spirit of Christmas, Winter Antiques Fair, The Baby Show and Classic Car.

As the exhibition industry announced a 7% decline in consumer event attendance in 2006 (AEO 100), Clarion Events was further boosted by significant increases in paying attendance, including 25% at Classic Car, 16% at Spirit of Christmas and 38% across both MPH events.

Announcing the results, Kent Allen, Clarion's regional managing director, said: “There are a number of reasons for this success, not least the hard work of all the marketing teams. I also firmly believe that our success has been and will continue to be driven by understanding our customers and what they want, building strong brands and delivering high quality, compelling content. As media fragmentation continues across all our markets and consumers become more demanding, these skills will become even more important.“

Meanwhile, marketing director Julian Graves, commented: “A number of factors have been responsible for this success not least the significant investment we’ve been making in marketing over the last 18 months. Developing our marketing skills and providing the right tools has improved our market understanding and customer profiling which in turn has resulted in better targeting, messaging and media use. As we continue to invest in and develop our people I am confident that we will see further improvement across the whole business.”