Exhibitors invest half their budgets in stand construction and stand rental

Companies from all around the world make considerable investments to participate in trade fairs in Germany. Exhibitors and visitors spend a total of around 14.5 billion euros a year. This is one re-sult of a study carried out by the ifo Institute on the overall economic relevance of exhibitions in Germany, which has just been released by AUMA, the Association of the German Trade Fair Industry. 

Exhibitors account for the majority of expenditures, investing a total of 9.6 billion euros per year to participate in trade fairs in Germany. Some 30.3% of this – or 2.9 billion euros – go to stand construction and complementary services, followed by stand rental including in-cidental expenses (21.2%), personnel (15.6%) and accommoda-tion/meals (13.5%).

Visitors to German trade fairs spend 4.7 billion euros a year. Their major expenditures are for accommodation (26.1%), followed by travel (21.6%) and catering (21.5%). 

Trade fairs induce total annual production effects in the German economy of 28 billion euros. This in turn generates 4.5 billion euros of tax revenue on national, state and municipal levels. A comparative assessment reveals that tax revenue has increased by 700 million euros since 2009.

Trade fairs in Germany account for 231,000 full-time jobs. This rep-resents an increase of 4,800 over 2009. More than half of trade fair-induced positions, or 126,200 employed persons, are in the service sector, led by the hotel and restaurant industries (31%). Retail and transportation account for 49,100 jobs and the production sector for 46,800. 

The study now released, Overall Economic Relevance of Exhibitions in Germany, registers costs for exhibitors and visitors as well as in-vestments in exhibition venues in Germany. It examines production, employment and tax effects of trade fairs in Germany. It covers the period from 2014 to 2017 in order to encompass all the different in-terval-based trade fairs that take place in the country.

The study is based on representative surveys of around 50,000 visi-tors and around 30,000 exhibitors from both Germany and abroad at different trade fair locations over the past four years. 

An English summary of the study “Overall Economic Relevance of Exhibitions in Germany” can be downloaded free of charge from the AUMA website: [download]