AEFI PRESENTS THE 2015 TRENDS IN ITALIAN INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITIONS
The AEFI – Italian Exhibition and Trade Fair Association – presents the trends, overall and for each sector, in the 2015 Italian international trade fairs, elaborated through analysis of the data gathered by the Interregional Trade Fair Coordination Body to produce Euro Fair Statistics 2016.
UFI, the Global Association of the Exhibition Industry, publishes Euro Fair Statistics each year with the data recorded from European trade fairs.
The 2016 edition contains the certified data of 2,420 international exhibitions held in 2015 in 24 European countries: in addition to Italy, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Finland, France, Germany Luxembourg, Moldavia, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Czech Republic, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, Turkey, Ukraine and Hungary.
In total, the European exhibitions considered recorded around 677,000 exhibitors and more than 67 million visitors, occupying about 25 million square metres. The report also shows that 35% of the events examined were addressed to professional visitors, 31% to the general public and 34% to both targets.
As far as Italy is concerned, 2015 saw 184 international exhibitions which in total occupied an area of 3.7 million square metres and animated more than 85,000 exhibitors and more than 10 million visitors.
The trends of the sectors of greatest interest, in terms of both visitors and exhibitors, are textiles-clothing-fashion, food-beverages-hospitality, sport-hobbies-entertainment-art and industry-technology-mechanics.
The performance of Trade Fairs dedicated to general public was significant, above all in terms of the number of visitors.
The data represents an excellent analytical tool for identifying the sectors to keep under control.
AEFI – the Italian Exhibition and Trade Fair Association – was set up in 1983 with a view to generating synergies between the most significant Italian exhibition districts. Specifically, AEFI would like to be seen as a privileged partner for operators and institutions alike, and its role is to support members through the development of activities and programmes in the sphere of training, marketing, promotion and research, as well as to provide services for trade fairs through the activities of its Committees: Exhibition Hub Technical Committee, Administrative-Legal
Committee, Internationalisation Committee and Trade Fairs Network Committee.
On an international scale, AEFI represents Italian trade fairs in UFI – Union of International Fairs. Chaired by Ettore Riello, AEFI includes 35 member exhibition districts, which organise over 1,000 events a year over an overall exhibition area of 4.2 million square metres. Most international trade fairs, and 85% of all trade fairs, which take place each year in Italy, are held in AEFI-member exhibition districts.