The German Trade Fair Market in 2010

The overall figures of German trade fairs & exhibitions in 2010 reveal that the German exhibition industry found its way back to stability. The national and international exhibitions in Germany have performed rather well in 2010. The rising economic trend (GDP 2010: + 3.7 per cent) provided a substan-tial number of international tradeshows with positive figures. In general, the exhibitions in the first six months of 2010 experienced constant numbers of exhibitors (comparison to 2009: -4.3 per cent), and more than half of the trade fairs even had more exhibitors than for the precedent event, as have shown preliminary calculations of the AUMA. A significant improvement was also observed concerning the visitor numbers: Those lied on average only 2 per cent below the numbers of the preceding events (comparison to 2009: -8.4 per cent), however more than 50 per cent of the exhibi-tions ended up with a surplus of visitors as well. Regarding the rented exhibition space however, the first halfyear 2010 still showed some 4 per cent losses compared to their respective fore events (2009: -6.0 percent). These numbers were caused by cost saving decisions of exhibiting companies in 2009. Second half of 2010 clearly positive Due to the strong economic revival, supported not only by growing foreign trade but also domestic consumption, even better figures are expected for the second half of 2010. For the total year of 2010, exhibitor figures of German trade fairs show the clear tendency to be positive, whereas the visitor attendance is probably going to match the precedent events.

New German optimism “The Germans are the optimists in Europe. Germany got out of the crisis quicker and stronger than we expected”, expressed Klaus Wübbenhorst, CEO of the GfK Group, leading German market research company. For the first time since 2006, domestic spendings are becoming a real pillar of growth besides the German ex-ports. 60 per cent of the German GDP results from domestic consumption. In the coming weeks, the Germans will spend some €14 bn for Christmas pre-sents and a further €2 bn as cash presents for their relatives and friends.