Status: 02/10/2021 2:45 p.m.
2020 should be the best financial year in the history of the Hamburg exhibition company – because of the corona pandemic, it has actually become the worst.
Instead of the planned 111.2 million euros in sales, only 20.1 million euros were moved, the annual result of the company owned by the city of Hamburg slipped to a minus of 58.2 million euros, said Hamburg Messe und Congress GmbH (HMC) on Wednesday With. Postponements and cancellations would have led to an almost complete trade fair lockdown from March 2020, in particular the cancellation of the three leading Hamburg trade fairs Internorga, SMM and Windenergie Hamburg as face-to-face events would have made it impossible to achieve the record sales target.
No forecast possible
The fair expects a negative result for this year as well. However, there are so many imponderables that specific figures cannot be given, said managing director Uwe Fischer. Trade fair boss Bernd Aufderheide spoke of reading coffee grounds, but also said: “You can certainly say that sales will be considerably lower compared to our earlier planning. And we have to assume that in 2021 we will end the year with a negative result . ” But he hopes that business will pick up speed again in the second half of the year, said Aufderheide.
AUDIO: Hamburg Messe takes stock (1 min)
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University exams and film shoots instead of trade fairs
According to the information, sales of the company’s own events fell from a planned 79.5 million euros to 8.3 million euros in the past financial year after a good start before the start of the corona pandemic. In the case of guest events, sales have more than halved from a planned 16.7 million euros to 7.8 million euros. Even worse would have prevented new orders at short notice. “Among other things, we then had over 20,000 students from the university who wrote their exams here,” said Aufderheide. A “crime scene” was also filmed. The city’s corona vaccination center has also been located in exhibition halls A2 and A3 since December.
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NDR 90.3 | NDR 90.3 Current | 10.02.2021 | 17:00
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