Certified exhibitor and visitor figures for 901 trade fairs in Europe are contained in the brochure “Euro Fair Statistics 2021”, published by UFI – the Global Association of the Exhibition Industry in December 2022. It includes key figures from 11 trade fair organisations operating in 13 European countries, including the German FKM – Society for Voluntary Control of Fair and Exhibition Statistics. With this, the UFI is continuing its long-standing series of statistics. No statistics are available for 2020 alone, because hardly any trade fairs took place worldwide in 2020 due to the Corona pandemic.
In 2021, the number of certified trade fairs also falls far short of the pre-Corona years. Comparatively, the 2018 edition contained certified data on around 2,700 trade fairs, while in 2019 there were just under 2,500. In parallel, the 2021 edition enabled the inclusion of hybrid and digital events. Some countries provided data for a total of 60 such events.
A total of 157,351 exhibiting companies and 18.3 million visitors were registered. 32 percent of the trade fairs were aimed at trade visitors, 32 percent at private visitors and 36 percent at both target groups. For physical and hybrid events, 6.7 million square metres of rented space were registered. UFI estimates that the certified events represented in this report account for approximately 31 per cent of the European exhibition market in terms of net rented space.
The report has certified trade fair figures for 363 organisers in 13 European countries, including Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Turkey. Here, too, there is a reduction, as the pre-Corona editions contained data on trade fairs from at least 20 European countries.
Compliance with the rules for determining the key figures is checked in each case by auditors or industry organisations. The FKM is responsible for certification and the set of rules in Germany and for auditing some trade fairs in Italy.
The brochure “Euro Fair Statistics 2021” can be downloaded as a PDF file here.
