Association: Exhibition industry lost three quarters of its sales

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Berlin (dpa) - The German trade fair organizers have lost almost three quarters of their usual turnover in the Corona year 2020.

The branch association AUMA assumes this.

Of more than 360 planned international and regional trade fairs, more than 70 percent should have been canceled or postponed, explained AUMA Managing Director Jörn Holtmeier.

Under normal circumstances, the trade fair industry's turnover is a good four billion euros per year.

Not only the organizers themselves, but also exhibition stand construction, hotels, restaurants as well as taxi drivers and freight forwarders would have suffered from the cut trade fair business.

In a normal year, holding trade fairs contributes around 28 billion euros to German economic output.

Of that, only around 6 billion would be left for 2020, explained Holtmeier.

The industry association expects that business with the face-to-face fairs will start again in the second quarter.

The first quarter, however, will be almost completely due to the corona pandemic.

The trade fair industry is still a long way from a level like in the pre-Corona year 2019.