According to Ray Bloom, Chairman of the Imex Group, this year’s Policy Forum at Imex Frankfurt was a success. The Policy Forum is about trying to understand the future of the business events industry and bringing together leaders from around the world to shape that future together.

“The question many people are asking is How do we get young people into the industry? What emerged from this year’s forum was a clear concern among many older individuals who have been in the industry for a long time and are worried about who will succeed them. There was an interesting discussion about whether they were concerned because of the digital age we live in, people working from home several days a week, the growing number of digital nomads, all of that was discussed, and they were concerned,” says Ray Bloom.

Professor Greg Clark, global urbanist and advisor, was the key figure behind the forum. He believes that there will be an even greater need for professional meetings in the future than we have today: “It led me to participate in the Future Leaders Forum, which had about 80 participants, many from Germany, but there was also a group of 20 people from the US and other countries. They were totally committed to the future and opportunities of the industry, and I was able to tell them something that I believe will happen. It’s not just that there will be jobs for them in the future, and that they will want to meet and get to know each other, not only at meetings, but also that the jobs they will get in leadership positions in the future will have a higher status, probably sooner than ever before.

“I found it very interesting how what I heard at our Policy Forum one day connected with what I saw with my own eyes among the future leaders the next day. I think it’s exciting to see this, and what it really means is that people working in the industry need encouragement, because these young people are out there, and you only need to look at the exhibition hall in Frankfurt to see that. I sit on the Policy Forum and hear this. I have noticed the increasing number of young people attending our trade fair, and that there are even younger ones enrolling in various courses. The concern that the meetings industry cannot attract younger people is exaggerated,” says Greg Clark.

“Buyers are very engaged in all aspects of the exhibition”

Carina Bauer, CEO of Imex Group: “This was our biggest Imex Frankfurt to date in terms of exhibition space, with almost 3,000 exhibitors. We have returned to approximately the same level as before the pandemic. Over 13,000 participants from all over the world are here, and well over 4,000 buyers. In fact, the number of buyers is almost 4,500. The majority of these are, of course, hosted buyers, but almost 1,000 participating buyers in addition to this have also come to the fair.”

In terms of invited buyers, Imex Frankfurt are seeing an increase of around seven per cent in hosted buyers for the actual week compared to last year’s show.

“We are also seeing a ten per cent increase in the number of individual meetings they have had, which really demonstrates the strength of buyers’ businesses and also their overall interest and engagement with our exhibitors and with the show. In terms of the total number of meetings, over 67,000 prebooked meetings have taken place,” says Carina Bauer.

“One of the newer metrics is about buyers’ favourites among exhibitors, sessions, and products via the app. We have seen a 30 per cent increase in usage there. What this really shows us once again is that buyers are very interested and that they also understand our systems better as we optimise them, hopefully making them more user-friendly than ever before. 

“Admittedly, it’s only a brief insight into what our buyers are interested in and which sessions they are interested in, but it will really help us make improvements for the future on the exhibition floor and also within the education program. It also shows that our buyers are very engaged in all aspects of the exhibition, which is also what we hear anecdotally on the show floor. It’s always essential for us to get data that supports the anecdotal messages we see,” Carina Bauer conludes.