By Harlan Chapman-Green
Once again it’s time to gear up and get ready for the hottest show of the year, that’s right it’s Basel time. This year is expected to be pretty interesting in the watch game as no one is really sure what will be released based on the events of the past year. Last year’s show was a little bit, how should I put it, dull? Yeah, I’ll go with that, or unexciting. Not to mention the effects of the US General Election and Britain’s exit from the EU (Brexit), these have seriously affected not only the wallets of the big corporations but also the back pockets of the buyers too, suddenly people are once again more reluctant to spend their hard earned dosh.
Anyway, we’ll be packing our metaphorical suitcases and sipping a simile of some shiraz on the plane, as in, we aren’t going to be in attendance this year. Unfortunately both fully booked hotels and our timetable uncertainty prevented WristReview from coming this time around, but hopefully, there’s always next year! By then our camera craft skills will be even better than ever so we aim to show them off at the show in 2018.
As expected you’ll be able to see the huge players all strutting their stuff in relative closeness to each other. We recommend visiting the obvious ones first: Patek, Breguet, Rolex, Omega, TAG Heuer and such, but there are some slightly left field companies we suggest you check out too. Companies like Blancpain, HYT, and Chopard (positioned close to Rolex for secret reasons we can’t share!).
Last year around 4300 journalists we expected to attend the show and this year I predict well over 4500. This means for all those companies it’s going to be absolutely manic, so as a quick reminder, if they forget your reservation or have a miscommunication don’t be harsh as they are undoubtedly doing their best. Entertaining so many people in a relatively short amount of time is going to be extremely tough.
About the show, it’s running from the 23rd to the 30th of March 2017 (that bit was obvious, come on). From then on the times are 09:00 until 18:00 across the week, so only nine hours of the full 24 can be used for taking pics, eating lunch, taking more pics, accidentally bumping into people and then going for a foot massage and a glass of Swiss wine to end the day. Somewhere in that some articles have to be written so, good luck to all the journalists there from all at WristReview!
