UFI Comment
Kai Hattendorf
UFI Managing Director
UFI’s 5 trends
to watch
ast year was a memorable one for the global
exhibition and business events industry, with
much attention on M&A, on changing event
formats or ‘festivalisation’, and on a changing
global landscape.
The UFI team used its Global Congress at the end of
2018 as well as many separate conversations all around
the world to identify the core themes that the association
feels will impact the global exhibition industry for the rest
of this year. Kai Hattendorf shares here ‘UFI’s 5 trends to
watch in 2019’:
1. Shifting trade patterns and a jittery global economy
Amidst a climate of political tension, protectionism and
false news globally, economic growth is slowing down. The
latest IMF forecasts point to rougher times ahead for the
global economy, citing protectionism and new tariffs as a
major cause.
US/China tariffs alone are calculated to reduce global
economic growth by 0.4% in the long-term. Even without
this additional burden, growth has become difficult to
sustain, especially in the mature exhibition markets: CEIR
data shows that, in the US alone, our industry has seen
below par growth compared to the US economy as a whole
in seven out of the last eight quarters.
It comes as no surprise that, whatever survey you look
at, growing numbers of US organisers are looking into
doing business outside of their home country.
In parallel, 2018 saw the first ever instance of a Chinese
organiser taking a majority share in a trade show outside
of China.
We will see players from the two largest domestic
markets in the world looking into options abroad. All
of this offers new opportunities to partner between
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Issue 1 2019
organisers from different markets, and to capitalise on
joint interests.
2. Digital is everywhere – but it is not everything
Ten years into the mass adoption of social media and
the rise of smartphones, it is time to end the discussion
about the role of digitisation in our industry. Today, digital
is simply everywhere – on the show floor, in the show
manager’s office, in the customer’s exhibition experience.
As digital has become as common as electricity, it has
become a commodity (just as show security, by the way).
The adoption of the European Union’s General Data
Protection Regulations (GDPR) is leading us to a ‘new
normal’ in the way that we as an industry are dealing with
customer data and are building up the in-house resources
to achieve that.
Data handling and data security will be big topics in the
future. As show brands around the world increasingly
communicate digitally with their customers and
communities all year round, data operations will be as
relevant as show floor operations.
3. Getting the basics right goes a long way on creating
experiences
For many years, the ‘show’ in this very phrase ‘show
floor’ was understood to be about exhibitors showcasing
their products and services. To the millennial and post-
millennial generation, however, it is just as much about
the ‘show’ that a show organiser puts on around the show
floor itself.
‘Festivalisation’ is a buzzword, and will rightly
disappear again. But we are well advised to listen closely
to our customers and their call for very personal and
individual experiences when they attend an exhibition.
w w w.exhibitionworld.co.uk