History 2003: CeBIT -10% or -18% Exhibitors in 2003?

It may not be on the scale of an Enron, but CeBIT is nevertheless plagued by opaque accounting.

A few months ago, we reported a discrepancy in the show’s reported attendance figures. One year ago, the organizers initially announced 7,962 displays for the 2002 event, only to lower the figure later to 7,264, without explanation.

At the time, we expressed our dismay at seeing CeBIT join the ranks of trade shows that inflate their numbers, and so at this year’s show decided to investigate further.

We put the question to a CeBIT spokesperson, who offered the following response: “Just prior to CeBIT 2002 we announced 7,962 exhibitors. But when CeBIT 2002 was finished, we realized that about 700 exhibitors (mostly small companies) did not pay their exhibition fees, and by the rules of FKM (Freiwillige Kontrolle von Messe- und Ausstellungszahlen), we were no longer allowed to count them. So in fact we just had 7,264 exhibitors in 2002, and not 7,962 as we counted before.”

Not exactly a satisfactory response. Will we soon find out that another 700 exhibitors neglected to pay their registration fees, and therefore will be disallowed this year? And which figures, the auditors’ (presumably an oversight board to regulate attendance claims advanced by trade shows) or those reflecting the actual numbers of bodies present, are more relevant for our purposes? For 2003, the official number of booths was given at 6,523. Should we calculate the Y/Y change based on the revised figure, i.e. a decrease in participation of only 10%, or the earlier number, for a decrease of 18%? The difference between the 2 is significant, and a lot rides on the answer.

We then asked the following questions:
– Generally, exhibitors pay for their booths in advance, and when they haven’t, are not allowed to exhibit. Does CeBIT operate differently?
– Can you provide the names of the 700 exhibitors that were disallowed?
– For 2003, do the 6,526 exhibitors include unpaid booths?

We’re still waiting for answers. Another cloud of doubt: when we reported the discrepancy, we also included CeBIT’s figure of 7,074 exhibitors for the 2003 show, revised to 6,526 just before the expo opened. What became of that difference? Is it a fact, then, that at CeBIT there are exhibitors who pay, and those (nearly 10%, if we are to accept CeBIT’s account of the affair) who don’t? If so, then perhaps the 2003 figures are questionable, if tomorrow we are forced to discount the deadbeats. Or perhaps this was behind the change in the 2003 figures.

In the end, it would be interesting to know how many exhibitors were really present in 2002, in order to get a true picture of the trend in participation in the world’s largest IT show.

On the other hand, for marketing purposes, CeBIT is apparently obliged to adhere to the auditor’s figures, the official numbers on which future exhibitors will base their decision to front a stand in 2004.

There is no question that in order to lure exhibitors and visitors, most shows tend to inflate attendance projections, only to revise the figure a year later in order to make the shrinking attendance numbers seem less drastic.

Until this year, we found CeBIT’s excellent accounting practices unimpeachable, in high contrast to a number of other computer trade shows that manipulated their data, and in particular attendance figures, according to the needs of their marketing people.

Are those days over for CeBIT? Can we trust their figures from now on, whether for the number of exhibitors or total attendance, if the FKM, whose existence we didn’t even know about, has not yet certified the results?

In any case, for 2003, we’ve decided to go with a different figure: -19%. That’s the percentage decrease in the weight of the expo’s catalogue, which diminished from 3,074g in 2002 to 2,484g in 2003, knowing that the weight of the cover and page stock is the same from one year to the next.

J.-J. M.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 183 on April 2003 from the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter.

Note: Deutsche Messe decided to cancel CeBIT in 2019 as the once popular trade show is no longer able to attract the up to one million attendees it did at the height of its popularity. It was the WW largest show in term of number of storage exhibitors for several years.