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AAMA American Amusement Machine Association AAMA FILLS UP ON OPPORTUNITIES AT THE 2006 NATIONAL RESTAURANT HOTEL/MOTEL SHOW

President Bush, Address Show Participants

The American Amusement Machine Association, (AAMA), joined thousands of other exhibitors and attendees at the 87th Annual National Restaurant Hotel/Motel Show, which is the foodservice industry’s largest trade show. This year’s show ran May 20-23, 2006 at Chicago’s McCormick Place Convention Center and featured approximately 2,100 exhibitors in hundreds of different product categories. The show’s 73,000 attendees represented all 50 states and over 100 countries around the world.

As always, food took center stage during the four day show, but there was plenty of competition for attendees’ attention. Just like in past years, the 2006 National Restaurant Association show boasted a wide variety of events for attendees to view or participate in, including over 60 educational seminars that covered topics ranging from leadership to nutrition to communication technology, cooking demonstrations by some of the world’s finest chefs, and the ever-popular showcase of foods from around the world in the International Cuisine Pavilion.

The National Restaurant Association also continued its tradition of bringing excellent speakers to the show.Ted Koppel, formerly of ABC News and currently the managing editor of The Discovery Channel, was this year’s featured speaker and spoke to a standing room only crowd on the second day of the show. The speech given by Chick-Fil-A founder Truett Cathy was also a popular draw.

Truett and Koppel, however, were eclipsed on the third day of the show by President Bush, who flew into Chicago early on Monday morning to address show participants on a variety of topics including the war in Iraq, terrorism, and illegal immigration.The president’s arrival was met with surprise by exhibitors and attendees alike, mostly because the National Restaurant Association could not confirm his official arrival until just before the show began. The president, despite low national approval ratings, spoke to a mostly supportive crowd of approximately 4,000. Although having the president in attendance attracted a great deal of media attention for the show, many exhibitors were disappointed with a morning that saw light floor traffic.

Sports also had a presence at this year’s show.The first two days of the exhibition took place at the same time as the defending World Series Champion Chicago White Sox and their north side rival, the Chicago Cubs, met for the first time during the 2006 season in the Windy City Classic. Once again, the Direct TV booth was the place to be as exhibitors and attendees gathered around multiple big screen televisions to watch their respective teams battle it out for city pride at U.S. Cellular Field.

In 2006, AAMA’s pavilion returned to the South Hall across from the Direct TV booth, which continued to generate a steady stream of traffic for the association and its members.The six companies who exhibited with AAMA in the coin-op pavilion included AMOA, Brady Distributing, Inc., Face Place LLC, Namco America, Inc., Rock-Ola Manufacturing, and Stern Pinball, Inc. Several other AAMA member companies who exhibited at the show but were not part of the AAMA pavilion were Fun Express, Marshall Productions, and TouchTunes Music Corporation. After four busy days on the show floor, AAMA members deemed the exhibition a success.

“Our Foto Fun Strips and Snap Shot booths were swamped everyday of the show. We had traffic in our booth 90% of the time and found the show very successful. I was amazed at the new avenues of business we picked up on and cannot wait to convert these leads into new business for our distributors and their operators,” said Marty Man Smith of Brady Distributing.

Next year’s National Restaurant Association show will be held May 19-22, 2007, and will remain at McCormick Place in Chicago, Illinois. The new 2007-2008 Location Trade Show (LTS) Calendar will be released in July. Keep your eyes open for more details on this valuable member benefit program in the next issue of Loose Change, the AAMA’s monthly e-newsletter, or online at www.coin-op.org.

The next event on this year’s Location Trade Show calendar is the International Bowl Expo, which will be held June 28-29, 2006 at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada.Following the Bowl Expo, the AAMA pavilion will head back to Atlanta, Georgia in mid-November to participate in the 2006 IAAPA show, which runs November 14th-17th at the Georgia World Congress Center.

Association members will receive a copy of the more than 175 leads acquired by the AAMA at this year’s National Restaurant Association Show in the immediate future. To request a copy, please contact Christy Maes toll free at 866.372.5190 or via e-mail at cmaes@coin-op.org.

On behalf of the AAMA, we would like to thank our member companies for continuing to support the LTS program and for making the coin-op pavilion a success throughout the year!