On 8 July, Informa Markets officially announced the rescheduling of the two Jewelry shows on "Jewellery & Gem WORLD Hong Kong (JGW)" and "Jewellery & Gem ASIA Hong Kong (JGA)" websites. JGW will be postponed to 9 – 13 November this year, while JGA this year will be cancelled and postponed to June next year.

The above information is merely posted on respective websites and according to the exhibitors, they have not yet received any details of the arrangement.

Concerning JGA being postponed to June next year, we welcome the decision from Informa Markets but regret that the exhibitors’ refund request remain unattended. Therefore, we urge Informa Markets to respond to the refund request in order to relieve the exhibitors' worries.

For the postponement of the September JGW to November this year, Informa Markets said that it "is a one-off arrangement”, and JGW “will return to its September slot in 2021". In other words, the positioning of this exhibition will be the same as that of the previous JGWs, which is a B-to-B trade, and the fees and arrangements should be the same. However, the reality is two venues in both HKCEC and Asia Expo will become a single one, and the exhibition period also changes to only Monday to Friday. In this case, will the show services and substances remain consistent as before? Is it appropriate to charge the same participation fee as before?

Furthermore, Informa Markets stated that the postponement to November "makes the JGW sourcing experience more important than ever" "to provide industry stakeholders the chance to capture orders from potential customers". They also claimed in an interview that this is to "respond to requests from industry partners." However, it seems that this statement is not backed by any survey like the cancellation of JGA which was supported by 80% of the exhibitors. The show scale significantly reduces, the duration changes, the haze of the epidemic is not receded, the quarantine measures for foreign visitors remains uncertain. With the poor economic environment for international trade, will the same business level be generated with such postponement? Is it still fair to apply the same September cost or value?

We are worried as we care about the rights of the exhibitors. We urge all exhibitors to carefully consider these. We hope Informa Markets to explain to the exhibitors about the refund arrangement and different situations in detail so as to relieve the doubts of the jewelry industry.