Motorcycle festival to be rescheduled

Thursday, Nov. 2, 2000 | 11:23 a.m.

Organizers of a six-day motorcycle festival that at one time had been scheduled for October are looking for a new date.

The Las Vegas International Bike Week and Expo 2000, which organizers said would draw 100,000 people to the city, is expected to be rescheduled after calendar conflicts arose.

"It's been postponed until next spring," said Kirk Hendrix, president of Las Vegas Events, which took the show under its wing with co-producers Paul Barrow, Dean Gordon and Lisa Tenner of BGT Productions, Las Vegas.

When Barrow unveiled the event in May 1999, organizers proposed the event for Oct. 3-8, 2000. As the date drew near, organizers discovered that the event conflicted with other conventions and it was scaled down to four days and moved to Nov. 9-12.

Then, the Lennox Lewis-David Tua heavyweight championship fight was scheduled for Nov. 11.

"Our mission is to fill hotel rooms, so we try to target slow periods since it's easier to get rooms for guests and it fills up the hotels at a time when they need it," Hendrix said.

Hendrix said the challenge with the motorcycle show is that organizers are trying to negotiate around two calendars -- those of motorcycle enthusiasts, who attend events all over the country, and those of special events coordinators in the city.

"We try to avoid scheduling special events when there's already something big going on in town because we don't want to compete for the rooms," Hendrix said. "It didn't make sense when the Lewis fight date was announced."

November also is a busy time for Las Vegas' convention calendar. The Specialty Equipment Market Association or SEMA show -- a major car products exhibition that will draw about 70,000 people to the city -- is under way.

Then, Nov. 13-17, Comdex comes to town. The computer exhibition, Las Vegas' largest trade show, brings more than 200,000 people to the city.