How the Western Propane Trade Show continues to evolve

Colin Sueyres, president and CEO of the Western Propane Gas Association, has been involved firsthand with preparations for the 74th annual Western Propane Trade Show & Convention, happening May 13-17 in Reno, Nevada.

“Our special guest speaker will be Stavros Anthony, Nevada’s lieutenant governor, while Kelly Senecal, co-founder and owner of Convergent Science, will be our keynote speaker. I can’t wait for the propane industry to enjoy every aspect of this show.”

Learn more about Sueyres.

Learn more about the 2024 Western Propane Trade Show.

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Transcription

We’ve got a very exciting show coming up. The Western Propane Trade Show and Convention is coming back to Reno this year for 2024. Very excited. A lot of new stuff at the show that we’ve never had a chance to do before. We’ve opened up additional space on the floor for entertaining. We’re going to be shutting down the street for a street festival. We’ve got a lot of new buyout opportunities, so a lot of new bars and restaurants for folks to partake in. We’ve got additional police presence, additional street cleanup going on, because for the first time, the city government has been bending over backward to want to make sure the show is as good as could possibly be.

Our special guest speaker is going to be the Lieutenant Governor of the state of Nevada, amongst our keynote speaker, Kelly Senecal, The Case for Combustion. So we’ve got this awesome programming lined up, these amazing guests, an even better venue, and opportunities. And this is just year one of the redo of Reno. Next year is going to be the 75th anniversary of the show. We’re going to be back in Reno again, but some of the stuff we’re working on in terms of fireworks displays and massive rollout of stuff, is going to be absolutely exciting. I kind of want to get through the ’24 show so I can get to the 2025 show, but bit ahead of myself.

What’s going to be fascinating is, in 2026, we’re going to be going to Portland for the first time. And what is amazing about the Portland show is we put out bids for 20 or so venues across the western United States because we wanted to mix it up, we wanted to keep the show fresh and exciting. And Portland came back to us and said, whatever you want to do with our venue, whatever you want to do with the areas around the venue, our city is yours.

That’s the one thing that we’ve always looked for in this industry, we put so much heart and soul into our work, we’re so open and generous, it’s really nice when the venues that host us show us that love back. And Reno and Portland have been the first venues in a long time that have basically said we want you to keep coming here forever, and whatever it needs from us to do it, we’re going to give it to you. So I’m really excited about the Portland show. We’re having our board meeting in October 2024 at the venue so vendors and exhibitors and potential guests can all get a look and see what the venue looks like, some of the opportunities around there.

And then in 2027 and 2028 we’ve actually got open RFPs out with a number of venues around the West. Part of why we haven’t booked all of those yet, is we actually want to show people what these new venues look like, what the new show looks like, so we can get more competitive bids that benefit our members. We actually did at our Palm Springs show in 2023 we put $50,000 in direct tax revenue back into that community, $50,000 in direct taxes. That’s other than the support for businesses and the surrounding community from our folks attending. It’s hard for folks to wrap their minds around that, but we’re making sure at the Western that, for the very first time, we are going to make sure that the venues where we’re taking our show appreciate us as much as we want to go to them.