After conducting an official attendance audit, the Consumer Electronics Association released final numbers for the 2015 International CES, with a record-breaking 176,176 attendees flocking to the show in January in Las Vegas.

At the same time, the association also unveiled plans to institute measures to cap next year’s show at 176,000 attendees in “an effort to ensure that attendees continue to have a quality experience,” according to show officials.
 
“With the growth of the consumer technology industry and the parallel growth of the International CES comes an increase in the qualified registrant base for our show. While these individuals are qualified industry professionals, we are reaching space capacity and simply can’t accommodate every qualified individual to our show,” said Karen Chupka, CEA senior vice president, International CES and corporate business strategy.

She added, “We take seriously our efforts to make sure CES attendees have a positive experience.”

Some of the enhanced, new credentialing procedures that CEA will enact for the 2016 CES include new registrants or previous registrants who did not attend the 2014 or 2015 CES will be subject to new enhanced credentialing and tighter qualification criteria.

This means that although individuals may have qualified for registration in previous years, they must resubmit credentials to qualify for the 2016 CES.

In addition, to qualify, all registrants must provide a brief description of their industry affiliation along with links to their company website with an employee roster, a description of their business engagement at CES or a link to a current publication or article the registrant authored or in which they were quoted or cited as an industry professional.

Also, in order to expedite affiliated registrants through the verification process, CES will ask registrants to include a business email address. 

The registration fee structure also will be changing, with tiered fees leading up the opening of the show.

“Our new procedures will help us cap the overall growth in CES attendance, promoting a quality business experience for our guests while focusing show and consumer technology industry growth in key areas, including new markets and trends,” Chupka said.

The 2015 CES  set a number of other records besides attendance, including more than 3,600 exhibitors, 2.23 million-plus net square feet of exhibit space, 6,952 media and analyst attendees, 703,602 mentions of #CES2015 during the show, with 7.51 billion total potential Twitter impressions, and 153 countries represented.

“We are thrilled to have produced such a phenomenal, record-setting International CES,” said Gary Shapiro, CEA president and CEO. “Our event offers a one of a kind, ‘can’t miss’ experience that allows our global attendees to see how different technologies from a range of industries impact each other.”

The audit was performed by Veris Consulting, and a full attendance audit summary report will be available online at the end of June.