SALT LAKE CITY — Outdoor Retailer was a factor when Salt Lake County expanded the Salt Palace Convention Center in the 1990s.
North America’s largest outdoor product trade show had become a fixture in Salt Lake City, but the expansion also addressed the need to draw in large-scale events and conventions, said Ryan Mack, vice president of communications for Visit Salt Lake, Salt Lake County’s tourism arm.
“The decision was driven by a broader need to accommodate a growing number of large-scale events and conventions,” he told KSL.com.
But it’s clear Outdoor Retailer isn’t as large as it was 30 years ago — or even a decade ago. About 300 brands from dozens of countries set up shop inside the Salt Palace this week, but that’s compared to the 1,600 exhibitors who came to Utah’s capital city in 2015.
It was once so large that tents were set up in the one-block parking lot across the street from the convention center to provide additional vendor space, whereas this year’s event — a blend of winter and summer markets for the first time since the 1980s — only filled up about half of the Salt Palace’s exhibit hall space.
Some brands continue to boycott Utah over public lands issues, which is also why the show temporarily moved to Denver before coming back to Salt Lake City a few years ago. Some have struggled to return to the trade show scene since the COVID-19 pandemic, which changed how people handle business.
This year’s event took place as potential tariffs introduced more uncertainty for many companies. Some became hesitant to budget for trade show travel because of the costs there; plus they’re not sure how many products they can produce or purchase until it’s sorted out, said Sean Smith, director of Outdoor Retailer.
“Budgets are tight,” he explains, as people sift through the various vendors set up around him. “A lot of brands had to say, ‘I don’t know if I can afford to come.'”
Smith still believes in the power of the trade show, adding that those who did come this year were eager to learn from their colleagues about how they’re handling these types of challenges. Outdoor Retailer is committed to the Salt Palace through next year, but big changes to the facility could begin after that, adding yet another hurdle if it wants to remain in Salt Lake City.
Reimagining the Salt Palace
Outdoor Retailer returned to Salt Lake City nearly two months after Salt Lake County leaders agreed to sell a portion of the Salt Palace to Smith Entertainment Group as part of the Utah Jazz and Mammoth owner’s “sports, entertainment, culture and convention district” plans. The $55 million deal is expected to be finalized in early 2027, which is also when major changes to the convention center could begin.
Related:
Salt Lake County plans to build a second ballroom once it remodels the Salt Palace, which Mack says would help the county remain competitive as it tries to bring in meetings and conventions, especially because the county could host “multiple large-scale events simultaneously.”
“Expanding and modernizing the facility will allow Salt Lake to attract more events, better utilize the space and serve a wider range of groups simultaneously,” he wrote. “The current Salt Palace ballroom is booked more than 80% of the time and remains one of the most in-demand spaces. Other areas of the building are not utilized as heavily.”
What about Outdoor Retailer?
Outdoor Retailer’s existing contract runs through next year, Smith said. And while Utah is once again in the middle of a public land debate, he says he doesn’t see the trade show leaving again because of that. The Salt Palace’s proximity to Salt Lake City International Airport, along with the city’s proximity to outdoor recreation gems, continue to make it an attractive location.
At the same time, he believes Outdoor Retailer can adapt to whatever the Salt Palace ends up becoming, regardless of whether Outdoor Retailer can bring the same number of attendees that it once did. Whatever the facility looks like, he believes it will help serve the convention’s purpose, which is to make face-to-face connections between outdoor product manufacturers and retailers.
“I think you can get creative with shows,” he told KSL.com. “There are ways to make things work. There are great hotel partners here; there are ways of doing things. … I don’t let things like that keep us down from being somewhere because I do believe that sometimes in getting creative, you find new solutions that are even better than the original ones.”
Outdoor Retailer’s future in Salt Lake City will come down to final negotiations.
Visit Salt Lake is open to working with event organizers to “explore future opportunities,” Mack wrote. He adds that conventions shouldn’t be impacted too much by construction once it takes place.
“These updates will not require a closure of the Salt Palace, and the facility will remain operational throughout construction,” he wrote.
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.
