Exhibition industry: a slow return to normalcy

Public fairs were excluded for a long time in the corona pandemic. Despite the partly successful online formats, the industry is now happy to be able to start trade fairs with visitors on site again. She calls for political support.

Tomorrow morning Gerald Böse will need a little longer in the bathroom. The CEO of the Cologne exhibition company shaves off his beard. He had let it grow since the pandemic had deprived his company and the entire industry of the business foundation. But now visitors can come to Cologne again – to the “Kind und Jugend” equipment fair, the first event since the confectionery fair a year and a half ago. “We were practically banned from working in March last year and at the same time had to decide how to maintain contact with our industries,” says Böse, looking back. “Then we set up the first digital Gamescom within three months.” Which was sporty because the trade fair industry otherwise thinks and acts in annual cycles.

Digitization cannot replace visitors

The computer game fair Gamescom with its hundreds of thousands of visitors is one of the cash cows of the Cologne fair – and it seemed just made for digitization: This year 13 million people watched the streams from the industry’s top virtual meeting. Nevertheless, the Cologne trade fair remains urgently dependent on physical visitors after the forced break, explains the head of the trade fair company.

“With sales in 2020 of 95 million euros, we lost a total of 110 million euros,” Böse calculates. “We have halved the equity capital built up in previous years – and it will certainly be a very tough year now in 2021”.

Industry speaks of billions in losses

The other German trade fair venues were no better. The corona losses in the trade fair industry are immense, says Jörn Holtmeier, managing director of the AUMA industry association. “That is an economic loss in our country of 42 billion euros – and that really includes everything that has escaped from the trade fair organizers, but also from the logisticians, restaurateurs, hoteliers, retailers and local handicrafts.” That is why politicians must continue to support the trade fair industry after the restart – through predictable hygiene rules and the unhindered entry of foreign trade fair guests, for example, says Holtmeier.

For the FDP MP Sandra Weeser, a trained business economist and chairwoman of the Economic Committee of the Bundestag, the trade fair industry is an example of how Corona has brought many companies into a difficult capital situation. Therefore, the coming federal government shouldn’t put any further strain on the economy. Many industries are hardly able to implement new legal regulations almost on a weekly basis, says Weeser.

Companies want face-to-face fairs

Holtmeier does not believe that the trade fair business will eventually become completely virtual. The companies in particular reflected “that they need their physical platforms, their real presence trade fair, especially in those industries where taste, smell and touch in the truest sense of the word are important – you can do all of that do not digitize, and that is why it is so important that you meet and meet personally. “

And what would you want to choose more carefully than the new stroller or the room furnishings for the offspring? Cologne trade fair boss Böse can take an excited visitor from home to the opening: “My wife is really looking forward to the ‘Child and Youth’ – as she has never looked forward to it before.” Because the beard is gone – and the trade fair industry is getting back to normal.