Things are going to be all right, because wholesalers are fixated on the right things.
As it turned out, more "nobodies" showed up than the naysayers reckoned. Attendance was down a bit from the 1999 event in San Antonio, but not remarkably so. (Last year's Chicago convention is not an "apples-to-apples" comparison, because it was in conjunction with the NEX show, which always inflated attendance.) ASA counted 403 wholesaler personnel in Las Vegas, representing 215 companies. That compares with 417 wholesalers from 255 companies in San Antonio. Spouse attendance dropped more steeply from 262 to 175, due to lingering fear about flying and spending restraint in a deteriorating economy. That diminished the social scene but hardly intruded on the business value of the ASA convention.