German trade fair industry

Economic significance | Structure | Functions | German trade fair competence | Outlook | German Trade Fair Quality Abroad (GTQ) |

Structure of the German trade fair industry

The German trade fair industry combines the activities of organizers, the exhibiting industry, visitors and service companies.

Organizers

The German trade fair organizers have an annual turnover of around Euro 2.8 billion. Four of the ten trade fair companies with the highest turnover in the world are based in Germany. Thus, the German trade fair industry - also on an international comparison - is one of the leading service industries. Overall around 100 trade fair and exhibition organizers operate in Germany. Around 40 organizers stage international trade fairs. The share of foreign trade fair organizers in the international trade fair segment amounts to 5%.

The trade fair organizers who are members of AUMA also arrange over 220 own trade fairs in important foreign growth regions - especially in Asia, North and South America as well as Eastern Europe.

Exhibiting industry

Around 59,000 German companies are active in the business-to-business segment, of this total, 51% are involved in manufacturing industry, followed by service providers (24%) and the trade (19%). With respect to the number of employees of exhibiting companies, smaller and medium-sized firms dominate: the share of exhibitors with less than 50 employees is 50%, exhibitors with 50 to 499 employees account for a further 34.1%. The level of sales of the companies also reflects the small and medium-sized structure of the exhibiting industry. Thus 37.4% of companies have sales of under Euro 2.5 million and a further 39.2% sales of Euro 2.5 to 50 million. [continue]

Visitors

21% of the visitors come from companies with over 1,000 employees, often including the top decision-makers from the large global groups. 79% of the trade visitors come from companies with fewer than 1,000 employees, 54% from companies with fewer than 100 employees. The share of managing directors, board members or self-employed businessmen among trade visitors is 30%, among the foreign visitors it is even as high as 48%. The share of decision-makers among all visitors is 61%. Foreign visitors have above-aver-age decision-making competence: three-quarters have a decisive or co-decisive influence. [continue]

Service companies

Only the involvement of a large number of service companies makes the optimal success of a trade fair possible. At the top of the list are stand construction companies, designers, event specialists and consulting companies, but also freight forwarders, suppliers of training for stand personnel as well as the catering and hotel trades.

update 1/2010

German trade fair industry: Significance, functions and outlook [continue]

Software for planning, calculating and evaluating trade fair participation