Dear Editor,
I have seen a few articles praising the recent GuyExpo and a few articles being critical of the service provided to the disabled.
I was one of the many who were seduced by the GuyExpo mania and decided to attend it as a family outing.
The exhibition of itself was excellent but the place was so crowded that there was very little time to fully appreciate the booths. It was even worse when you had your kids in tow and trying to wriggle yourself through the crowd.
What dampened this family outing and eventually left a sour taste in the mouth was the traffic congestion which forced the tired feet of the parents and children to have to walk blocks to get to transportation. For those who used the VIP parking it was an absolute nightmare to get out in rush hour.
A few questions need to be asked of the organisers:-
1) Has GuyExpo outgrown the Sophia exhibition site and now needs a new venue which is more spacious and people friendly (especially family friendly) and where there is better parking facilities?
2) After so many years of running GuyExpo, can’t the organisers have better control over the traffic congestion? This seems to be the biggest problem and one would have thought that by now there would have been innovative ways to curb the congestion. Let it be a research project for UG to come up with a solution.
3) With GuyExpo so crowded, people should be given the option of deciding which booths they want to see and areas they want to go. This can be done by having a large display of a plan/diagram tactfully positioned where people could see them.
There actually was a diagram but no one could read it in the dark.
Contrast this with the high powered lights which beamed on pictures of our president and relevant minister.
No one faults the ministry for highlighting these pictures but they should have been astute enough to realise that the diagram of the layout also needed illuminating so as to help the public.
4) Somehow there was a feeling that this exhibition paid much emphasis on the booths but little on the customer service (as highlighted by the plight of the disabled and by those that had to suffer traffic congestion and long treks to parked vehicles, absence of adequate parking space near to the venue etc).
5) The presence of casually dressed persons doing security checks (and not a thorough one I may say) was not particularly pleasant and there must be better ways to have this done.
Even more annoying was for a family to be divided so that there could be separate checks for males and females. When there is a family with kids in tow this is an unpleasant experience.
As a family outing, I found GuyExpo to be disappointing for the simple reason that the obviously excellent displays and booths could not be properly enjoyed due to the crowds.
But the main reason why this family outing was a disappointment was because of the difficulty to get into the venue and moreso to get out of the venue when there were tired little feet and also tired parents who had to walk long distances to find their transport.
Yours faithfully,
(Name and address supplied)
