How long should an international trade fair last? in other words "How long is the piece of string" :)

Making my way back from Food Ingredients, Europe, made me thinking.

Over the past 25 years I cannot count how many international trade fairs I attended, as an exhibitor, a visitor and now organising the participations of selected exporters supported through United Nations technical assistance projects. Independent of the country or the sector, one of the key characteristics of the fairs is their duration.

2024 has been particularly busy for "my" market linkages activities, from organising participations of selected delegations to trade fairs in the US, Asia, the Middle East & Europe. Participating to a trade fair, if you had the right budget, it takes time and planning but at the end of the day is not that difficult. But selecting the right trade fair, the right market segment in the right market is where it gets tricky. You can't get in wrong, too much is at stake.

Let’s go back to the initial question, how long is the ideal duration for a trade fair?

Some trade fairs ‘ durations are completely unreasonable, take the FIARA (yearly Senegalese agro trade fair) nothing less than THREE weeks! Yes you read correctly, 3 weeks. How can any exhibitor/company can be expected to put their business and life on hold for 3 weeks.

If you take another extreme, Food Ingredients USA, on the other hand, lasts only 2 days. By the time everyone settles in, 1 day later basically it is already over.

1.5 days actual business opportunities, for the cost of exhibiting on the USA market, sounds too short to me.

Then you have the large (way too large if you ask me) European agro food trade fairs, the ANUGA, the SIAL of this world, that last 5 days. Boy this is too long, especially they tend to start on a week-end, so you get the international buyers that flew in for the fair at the week end, but the local German or French buyers tend to show up on the Monday onwards only.

How can an exhibitor still be motivated for 5 days for 10-hours a day?

If you ask me, 3 days is the ideal duration. It enables the exhibitors to settle in and still have 2 full days of trading, whilst giving the opportunity of the buyers to stop by a second time during the fair if needed.

What do you think? What is for you the ideal duration for an international trade fair?

Don't forget to take this under consideration when selecting a trade fair, it has a direct impact on your budget but also on how much you can maximise your time and efforts.

Once the trade fair is over, my job ends, but then it is only the beginning of the tedious but necessary follow-up for the exporters. So pace yourself and be realistic in terms of the time and effort you can commit before, during and after to a particular trade fair.