(Bloomberg) -- Geneva’s auto show is abandoning its namesake location in Switzerland next year and instead will be held in Doha, Qatar, switching its traditionally chilly venue in alpine Europe to the balmy Middle East.  

Organizers of the event, which is formally known as the Geneva International Motor Show, attributed the decision to hold the show outside its home town to unspecified economic, geopolitical and pandemic-related concerns. 

“The risks overweighed the opportunities,” Maurice Turrettini, president of the foundation that runs the show, said Thursday in a statement. 

The exhibition, which hasn’t been held since 2019 after being canceled days ahead of a planned 2020 staging due to the global outbreak of the coronavirus, was to have been supplemented by a Doha-based event, according to a statement last year in partnership with Qatar Tourism. But the organizers decided Thursday at a meeting in Bern to scrap the Geneva portion of the event in February and hold it exclusively in Doha in November 2023. 

The news comes less than a month before the scheduled start of the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, which also has not been held in three years.  

The Geneva show’s Qatar event is slated to be held every two years, the statement said.

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