This is my fourth show, the second I've attended in Orlando. And the International Builders' Show event is good to the press. Last year, exhibitors supplied the press room with bottled water and juice. Good thing, too. Refreshments of any kind are expensive. Sandwiches, sodas and coffee are available at food stands in the lobby, but the prices are, well, almost as high in New York. A sandwich goes for $9.75. Coffee, a 12-ounce size, is $3-plus nearly everywhere.
Anyway, there's no bottled water in the press room this year. No juice. We've got to rough it.
And, watchful as the press can be, more than one colleague has noticed the lack of complilmentary bottled water.
"The industry must really be on hard times," said one writer.