Last year, and before the corona pandemic, the trade fairs in Germany once again proved their attractiveness to foreign exhibitors. Their number increased by 3.5% in 2019 reaching 113,109. Similar to 2018, one of the "smaller" regions in terms of exhibitor numbers recorded the highest growth rate for foreign exhibitors at the German trade fair venue: after Latin America in the previous year Africa was the frontrunner in 2019, ahead of Asia.
In 2019 China was again the largest exhibitor nation at trade fairs in Germany with 15,685 participations.
Almost 16% growth compared to the respective previous events was registered in Germany for the African states, with North Africa including Egypt (+10%), Morocco (+22%) and Tunisia (+30%) at the top, while South Africa (-1%) fell back as the second largest exhibitor country, otherwise almost on a par with Egypt.
By far the most important region outside Europe, however, continued to be South, East and Central Asia with almost 31,000 exhibitors and repeated strong growth from the leading countries China (+14%), India (+7%) and South Korea (+8%).
North America only recorded below-average growth of 1.5%, with a 3% decline from the USA contrasting with a 7% increase in Canadian exhibitors. Latin America was the region with the weakest growth in 2019, with 8% fewer exhibitors. Mexico, which had a strong presence in 2018 as the partner country of the Hannover Messe, fell back to its previous level, Brazil increased slightly and Argentina lost 5% exhibitors. Only Colombia had a strong increase with +7%.
The EU countries recorded a slight drop of 2%, with several of the exhibitor-strong countries of Southern and Western Europe showing slight declines, with the exception of Italy (+1%). In contrast, the Baltic States in particular recorded significant increases, but also Croatia, Poland and Slovenia. The European non-EU countries were able to achieve a considerable increase of +11%, with Russia (+15%) and Turkey (+11%) leading the way. Starting from a rather low level, the Ukraine even had almost one third more exhibitors. Switzerland, on the other hand, lost over 6% of its exhibitors compared with previous events.
The five largest countries in terms of exhibitor numbers in 2019 were the People's Republic of China with 15,685 participations, ahead of Italy (13,683), France (6,624), the USA (5,346) and the Netherlands (5,341)..
