China leads the world in terms of available venue space followed by the USA and Germany. This was revealed by the 2022 edition of the World Map of Exhibition Venues report which was released by the Global Association for the Exhibition Industry (UFI) on 1 February.
The report was a culmination of a survey of venues with a minimum of 5,000 square meters of indoor exhibition space and that hold various types of exhibitions, trade fairs or consumer/public shows on a regular basis. The survey established that there were 1 351 such exhibition venues across the world. The report further highlighted that the world has a total of 40.5 million square metres of space.
The report pointed out that Europe is home to the most exhibition space globally (15.7 million sqm), and Asia – Pacific region offers more exhibition venue space than North America (13.0 and 8.3 million sqm respectively). Regarding the number of venues, Europe also is home to the highest number of venues (488), followed by North America (380) and Asia – Pacific (316) respectively.
Europe and the Asia-Pacific region present the largest number of venues with more than 100 000 square metres of space – 39 and 23 respectively. The report indicated that the world has 73 such mega venues which account for 5 percent of the market.
The average size of venues in the Asia-Pacific region exceeds that of any other region, a result of many infrastructural projects in the region, especially in China. China is now home to 25.2 percent of the world’s venue capacity. The USA currently holds 17.1 percent of global venue space capacity, while Germany is home to 7.9 percent. This notwithstanding, Europe retains its global lead on available venue capacities with 39 percent of the global market share, ahead of Asia – Pacific with 32 percent and North America with 20 percent.
The top five countries/regions, namely China, the USA, Germany, Italy and France, account for more than 60 percent of the total world indoor exhibition space.
Africa was represented in the report by Algeria and South Africa whose venues, Palais des Expositions – SAFEX and the Johannesburg Expo Centre respectively were listed under venues with a minimum of 50 000 square metres in UFI’s Middle East and Africa region.
The last UFI world exhibition venues survey was carried out in 2017.