Hanley Woods Exhibitions, the owner/producer of StonExpo, announced to exhibitors at this October’s event that the next edition will be Jan 26-28, 2011, at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas.

The next StonExpo will also be held in conjunction with SURFACES 2011, a Hanley Wood-produced flooring show, at the Mandalay Bay facility. The events will be in different halls and marketed separately.

The 15-month hiatus also means that the Marble Institute of America (MIA), which holds its annual meeting concurrently with StonExpo, will need to meet independently of the event sometime in 2010. Gary Distelhorst, MIA executive vice president/CEO, reported on the MIA-affiliated Stone News Channel that next year’s annual meeting would possibly be held in tandem with a high-level management conference for the organization’s membership.

Distelhorst added that Hanley Wood agreed to help fund the yet-to-be-scheduled 2010 MIA meeting/conference.

The 2009 version of StonExpo reportedly drew approximately 4,000 attendees, indicating a drop of more than 20 percent from 2008 totals. The 53,000 ft² of exhibit space for this year’s event marked a 50-percent decline from 2008.