Past, present and future: the exhibitions are getting ready for industry reactivation

On July 11, 1240, the emperor Frederick II granted the city of Frankfurt am Main the rights to carry out trade fairs. Seven hundred and eighty years later, the trade fair industry has a history full of events, which includes many successes and also several crises, including two World Wars, of which it has recovered.

A look backwards shows that trade fairs, as mirrors of the economy, repeatedly face challenges, but they have always worked as a platform to promote the economy recovery in times of crises. The most recent one, and that we are still undergoing, is undoubtedly the Covid-19 pandemic. But after a global lockdown of several months and the rescheduling of events, the world is gradually carrying out exhibitions again in countries which are progressively resuming activities.

The good news come from China and Germany, in which trade fairs have been enabled with the approach of not considering B2B (business to business) meetings as equal to a massive event, since they are developed in large places and with a strict compliance of the health and safety standards that include not only social distancing and the mandatory wearing of face masks but also the requirement that all visitors register online in advance.

The events carried out recently sent a very clear signal: the industries are ready for trade fairs to come back and the visitors have shown that face to face meetings and dialogue are irreplaceable. This is reflected in the more than 40,000 visitors and 800 exhibitors that took part in the textile exhibitions carried out in China during July this year, in spite of the pandemic.

Personal encounters will still be the essence of the industry; this is something that will not change. What will happen is that digitalization processes will develop more quickly. Virtuality is not the solution to physical meeting, but it is a tool that will help us a lot. As professional organizers we are getting ready to reach a greater audience. In this framework is that we talk about hybrid events and of combining what happens in the physical space with virtuality and networks. We face the challenge of building events in the real world that coexist with virtual platforms.

To go on being business facilitators and participants of the change, we are ready to face the new challenges, and offer what participants and industries need, by meeting the new rules and local requirements. But with the premise that face to face meetings and dialogue are irreplaceable.