How Many Exhibition Venues, Events Are There?

Any meeting planner who's ever asked the questions, "How many events are there?" and, "How many venues?" now has answers: UFI, the Global Association of the Exhibition Industry, has recently conducted several studies that provide statistics about venues, the events that take place in those venues and the companies that organize those events, it announced last week.

Based in Paris, UFI represents 574 member organizations — including trade show organizers and convention centers — in 84 countries. Its 2011 "World Map of Exhibition Venues" identifies 1,197 venues worldwide with a minimum of 1,640 square feet of indoor exhibition space, which translates to a total gross indoor exhibition space of 106.9 million square feet. That's up by 57 venues since 2006, with an overall growth of 11.1 million square feet, 54 percent of which is related to new venues and 46 percent to expansions of existing venues. While most of the growth (46 percent) has taken place in China, Europe and North America continue to offer the highest venue capacities, according to UFI, which said five countries — the United States, China, Germany, Italy and France — account for 59 percent of the 2011 total world indoor exhibition space.

In a separate report, UFI estimates that a minimum of 30,700 exhibitions of at least 1,640 square feet took place in 2010, which translates to 337.9 million square feet of net rented exhibition space. Collectively, those events attracted an estimated 2.8 million exhibiting companies and more than 260 million attendees.

Based on averages for 2009 and 2010, UFI reports that 14 companies rent more than 1.6 million square feet of net space on a yearly basis and 82 companies rent up to 164,000 square feet. Further analysis indicates that, on average, the "medium to large" companies — those that rented between 656,000 and 1.6 million square feet per year in 2009 and 2010 — performed better than either the smaller companies or the very large ones.

The results of UFI's next research report — its bi-annual "Global Exhibition Barometer," which assesses the key economic results of companies in the exhibition industry, including turnover and operating profit analysis — will be released in January 2012.

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