Although IFA only very recently confidently announced that the electronics fair would get a green light this year, the event has been cancelled after all.
Of course, it was bound to happen. Friend and foe raised at least one eyebrow when the organizers announced that this year ‘s IFA would be ‘business as usual’. Covid? That’s long past tense in September, we can get a go for it again! Not to mention that the vaccination rate in many EU countries is still (sometimes far) below standard. And so there are enormous risks attached to mass events.
Do trade fairs and expos have a future?
Ultimately, the organization of IFA apparently does not want to be responsible for any misery. And so the event for this year has been cancelled altogether. Next year the expo will be held in its normal form, from September 2 to 6, to be precise.
But actually, that too is a matter of conjecture, no one knows what the situation will be like then. You can even ask yourself whether such a large and centralized fair in the year 2021 still makes sense at all. Any news that is presented there is often immediately – or even earlier – known online. Perhaps it would be more practical to hold smaller-scale, regional expos.
An additional advantage is that smaller local manufacturers also get a chance to show their wares and do not drown in the violence of the big and bombastic well-known names. It is also good for the environment, because a lot of people travel to IFA, High End or similar events.
The once illustrious CeBIT, for example, threw in the towel at the end of 2018 – even before the pandemic. And that was actually hardly newsworthy at all anymore. That end was not for nothing, by the way, as the event was still only a pale shadow of what it once was. In short: are these kinds of expos still very useful in the 21st century? You may wonder..
