As always, the industry's jet-setters will be exchanging travel notes from the past year. In recalling many highlights to the past 12 months in readiness, I got to thinking about the moments where things didn't quite go to plan. I'll share one with you.

It was the Monday night of Intermat itself and two colleagues and I were setting out for a business dinner when we walked into a violent clash between supporters of the Tamil Tigers and French police. With our eyes streaming and our throats burning, we instinctively retreated back into the lobby of the hotel. The air was thick with pepper spray - that we managed to navigate our way through the carnage and make our appointment, albeit half an hour late, didn't matter: I was beginning to wish I wasn't in Paris.

While we were in the wrong place at the wrong time--you can't travel as much as we do without stories to tell--there weren't many exhibitors or visitors at Intermat, who near the Gare du Nord, organisers were left to assess the damage caused by a hadn't felt the same at least once during the week. Like the owners of the shops, vehicles and properties that were targeted during the clashes show which was quiet on every single day.

At trade shows the size of Intermat and Bauma, every stand represents a staggering cash outlay; it's a potential waste even in good times, let alone in a recession. The over-priced floor space itself costs money, as does the staffing, entertaining and cost of transporting cranes, sometimes from the other side of the world. Also consider the downtime endured by equipment spending sometimes weeks before and after the show in transit, in addition to the week it stands redundant at the exhibition. Nobody can use a crane productively if it's stuck in a show ground being prodded by tyre-kickers.

As high as some of the cranes themselves would be the pile of cash if you stacked it all up.

Not that you can blame show organisers for political unrest, but I expect Bauma to be better than its Paris-based counterpart. Frankly, it is in a different league. But suppliers, and visitors, will be hoping the least they get in return for their sometimes multi-million dollar investment is some indication that the market will soon recover.

Fresh off the back of the pre-Bauma press event in Munich, Gerold Dobler, corporate communications, trade press, Liebherr-International Deutschland GmbH, told me: "Judging on the impact of previous Bauma shows, it could prompt an upturn."

Indeed, many are hoping Bauma will be the catalyst to an improvement in fortunes for an industry barely recognisable to the one which turned out at the previous Bauma in 2007. We're canvassing opinion in our current poll.

First for the team here is our fourth Middle East Cranes conference in Dubai. It has been well documented how the economy there has nose-dived, but there are still opportunities in the UAE, as delegates will discover. Register today.

Richard Howes Editor, Cranes Today