The European Major Exhibition Centres Association (EMECA) has reported its members have made a strong restart to business, with packed Q3-Q4 calendars, although overseas exhibitors’ and visitors’ attendance is still low.
EMECA was meeting for its General Assembly, and in person for the first time since the pandemic started. The event was hosted by Jaarbeurs in Utrecht and the GA heard calls for facilitating international travel for WHO vaccinated attendees of trade fairs.
The GA “marks the moment of strong restart of all our Members’ activities and with this, EMECA sends the message that nothing can substitute face-to-face-events”, declared EMECA president Ricard Zapatero.
After exhibitions in Spain were allowed to reopen as early as May and Italy in June, all other EMECA members are now back in business with tight schedules for the autumn and the beginning of the next year, recovering postponed or cancelled events in addition to the usual scheduled ones.
National and European exhibitions are working fine, the meeting heard, although the recovery of international trade fairs is slower as exhibitors and visitors from key markets overseas still cannot attend. In terms of expectations for a full recovery to pre-pandemic levels of business, estimated dates vary greatly with many expecting to be fully back in 2023 while others, also due to exhibition cycles, named 2024 through to 2026 even.
Even though all EMECA members said they had increased the digital offerings and services for the sectorial communities they serve with their respective exhibitions, they believe the strong physical rebound shows that the pandemic has strengthened the business model. Digital services are there to stay and very helpful in the field of knowledge transfer, EMECA believes, but maintains that networking, new business and creating trust among business partners is less successful online.
EMECA noted a 75% in the number of exhibitions in 2020 meant hard cost cutting for all its members.
Now, EMECA members are ready to launch new exhibitions in 2022.
GA guest speaker Eric Philippart, senior expert from the European Commission’s DG GROW, shared information about support provided on a European level to soften the effects of the pandemic for the sector and explained the policy shaping underway to set the goals for the green and digital transition in the Travel and Tourism ecosystem, to be followed by all other ecosystems.
He also noted the European Commission’s efforts towards ‘harmonisation’ of travel regulations - the competence of the member states - and highlighted the European Digital Covid Certificate which he said could become an international standard.
EMEC members also shared their views on current problems impeding the full recovery, such as staff shortage and talent attraction, insurance for health-related event cancellations, financial aid, and above all the condition for full recovery: the urgent need to harmonise the lifting of travel restrictions, no quarantines, allowing business travel for exhibitions and events for vaccinated travellers and recognition of all WHO approved vaccinations for that aim.
It was also pointed out that trade fairs and business events would be the strategic tool to implement the green and digital transition in a successful and speedy way across all industrial sectors.
EMECA has also elected its Board for 2022. New to the Board will be Corrado Peraboni, CEO of IEG, as vice-president treasurer and Pablo Nakhlé-Cerruti, CEO of VIPARIS, as vice-president relations with the EU. Elzbieta Roeske, MTP Grupa, and Anne-Marie Baezner, Eurexpo Lyon, were confirmed for another term of two years.
Currently the 23 EMECA members host and organise nearly 2.000 trade fairs a year globally, out of which 1,550 in Europe.
