UFI’s World Map of Exhibition Venues provides detailed regional and country profiles for 28 markets

07 December 2017, Paris, France : Available exhibition space is one of the main drivers of the development of the exhibition industry, and venue space continues to grow in most regions of the world. Following the release of preliminary data last month, UFI, the Global Association of the Exhibition Industry, released today its full report on the World Map of Exhibition Venues. In addition to analysing indicators on key regional trends, it lists the largest venues for all 28 markets whose total capacity exceeds 200,000 sqm of gross indoor exhibition space. It also includes final adjustments in the data set.

It has been six years since UFI last produced this global census covering all exhibition venues with a minimum of 5,000 sqm of gross indoor exhibition space. This year’s release shows an increase of capacity in the majority of markets around the world. Asia-Pacific has become the market with the second largest offer (23.7% of the total world capacity), behind Europe (45%) and ahead of North America (23.6%).

In terms of size segmentation, 61% of venues globally have an indoor capacity between 5000 and 20,000 sqm, one third (34%) belong to the medium-size segment, offering between 20,000 and 100,000 sqm, and 61 venues (5%) have more than 100,000 sqm. With a growth rate of 27%, the latter is the fastest growing market segment.

The USA remains the market with the most exhibition venue space available (19.8% of global capacity), with China (16.6%) and Germany (9.3%) completing the top three. These three, plus Italy and France, each offer more than 2,000,000 sqm of total gross indoor exhibition space. Taken together, these markets account for almost 60% of the total world indoor exhibition space.

Kai Hattendorf, UFI Managing Director/CEO, says: “We are pleased to see that in recent years, additional venue space has become available in almost all regions of the world. Venue investments are long-term investments – so these trends underline the positive outlook for the exhibition industry mid- to long-term. In addition to adding new space, many venue operators have also made significant investments to upgrade their existing venue capacities.”

The following markets are covered in the 2017 UFI World Map of Exhibition Venues: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Poland, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, The Netherlands, Turkey, UAE, United Kingdom, and the USA.

In line with UFI’s mission to provide vital data to the entire industry, the full World Map of Exhibition Venues report is available free of charge on the UFI website at www.ufi.org/research. The full report, which will be available in December, will include data for each region and for the main national markets. It will also include a list of all venues with a minimum of 100,000 sqm of gross indoor exhibition space.

UFI would like to thank the following organisations, who helped collect the data for this research: AAXO (South Africa), AEFI (Italy), AEV (United Kingdom), AFE (Spain), AMAREF (Mexico), AOCA (Argentina), AUMA (Germany), BSG (UFI/BSG Asia/Pacific report), CAEM (Canada), CENTREX (Central Europe), CLC VECTA (The Netherlands), EXPO EVENT (Switzerland), FAIRLINK (Scandinavia), FEBELUX (Belgium/Luxemburg), RUEF (Russian Federation), TFYD (Turkey), TSNN (USA), UBRAFE (Brazil) and UNIMEV (France).