Paris Expo Porte de Versailles

Paris Expo Porte de Versailles is the largest exhibition center in France. It hosts all major trade events in Paris, including Cosmeeting/Creative Beauty (the biggest professional beauty trade show in France), Pack & Gift, Salon du E-Commerce Paris, Gourmet Food & Wine Selection and many others. If you are planning to visit Paris - check out their schedule, there's a good chance that something interesting is going on here. Book your tickets online in advance, some events are free.

Constitué de 8 pavillons d'exposition totalisant 220 000 m, dans Paris Intramuros à proximité de l'aéroport d'Orly et de toutes les gares parisiennes, Paris Porte de Versailles se place au 1er rang des parcs français et au 7e rang des parcs européens. Ce lieu phare accueille chaque année plus de 200 salons, congrès et événements tels que le Salon et Congrès des Maires (Groupe Moniteur), l'événement Groupement des Mousquetaires, Who's Next (WSN Développement) ou le Salon Nautique de Paris (Reed Expositions) et attire plus de 6 millions de visiteurs du monde entier.

Came here for the Salesforce World Tour event and it was very hard to find. There's so many different gate entrances that my uber driver took me around to find, but finally did because it was the main entrance (duh, should've known). Space was big but only one bathroom on the main floor.

Living in Paris for 3 years now I've had my share of visits of expositions at the Expo Porte de Versailles. I recon I've been there about 15 times so I think I can allow myself a well founded opinion.

This must be the worst Expo of this size in Europe. Dating back to 1923 it is a grown structure and visiting it now, you can clearly see that it was not meant to be such a big Expo from the start, but grew to this size in the confined space between Boulevard Victor and the Peripherique. But as every Oncologist can tell you - growth isn't always something good and the Expo's size has long exceeded that of what the area around it can cope with. Every City-planner should be able to see that an Expo of this size, in that area with these Transportation limitations - is not a good Idea. But are they trying to downsize the Expo? No, they are still cramming more stuff into the area (see 'Tour Triangle').

Public transport is not adapted to cope with the really big events like the 'Foire', the 'mondiale' or the 'Salon d' agriculture', despite 2 Tramways, 1 Metro and several Bus-lines. There is insufficient Parking for Motorbikes and Cars (and it's quite expensive too) and around the expo you will struggle to walk on the sidewalks with all the cars and motorbikes illegally parked there. Not that anyone cares though, it seems there is pretty much a 'laissez faire' approach to that problem.

Service? On 3 Occasions I wrote E-mails to the Expo with some Questions and never received any sort of response. Two of those were in French, so that does not count as an excuse. At the Expo in Person, the attitude of the personnel ranges between indifferent and hostile. Indifference is also the attitude they seem to have towards black-market vendors.
Yes, they've recently put up signs urging people not to buy Tickets from these illegal vendors, but when you let them still stand INFRONT of the Ticket-booths or half a meter away from the security at the entrance - I can only conclude that they don't care.

Instead of renovating this failure of an Expo it should be closed and rebuild somewhere outside of town from scratch. That would (or could) at least solve the transportation and parking issues. But 230 000 m2 of exposition space crammed into an area with 28 000 inhabitants per square km? That's NEVER going to work and it's never going to result in a pleasant experience for visitors or exposants.