"The digital edition of Hannover Messe has impressively demonstrated the innovative strength of companies from the mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and IT sectors. At the same time, it has shown that the trade fair of the future is hybrid," says Dr. Jochen Köckler, CEO of Deutsche Messe. "Together with our exhibitors and partners, we have once again succeeded in strengthening the brand essence of the world's most important industrial trade fair: Innovation, inspiration and networking in the age of industrial transformation - that's what Hannover Messe stands for."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel opened the world's leading trade fair for industry on Monday together with Joko Widodo, President of the Republic of Indonesia. 90,000 registered participants informed themselves about the 10,500 products and innovations of the 1,800 exhibitors. In the conference programme, 1,500 experts discussed topics such as Industry 4.0, digitalization of industrial processes, supply chain management, lightweight construction and hydrogen and electromobility.

Köckler: "The popularity of the digital Hannover Messe exceeded our expectations. Nevertheless, it has become clear that a digital trade fair cannot replace the magic of a physical event." He referred to face-to-face technical discussions, concrete leads at the trade fair stand, the haptic experience directly on the product or chance encounters that can lead to new business partnerships. "The core of the interpersonal is simply missing," says Köckler.

"We therefore see this as confirmation that we are on the right track to combine the best of the digital and physical worlds in the future based on our experience at the digital Hannover Messe in order to create a holistic hybrid trade fair experience for our customers," continued Köckler.

During the five live trade fair days, the 90,000 participants generated more than 3.5 million page views and 700,000 search queries in the exhibitor and product search. In addition, the new conference and exhibitor streams were viewed around 140,000 times. Köckler: "The Digital Edition was a successful test and use case for us in every respect. We wanted to find out what concrete benefits digital formats bring to exhibitors and visitors at Hannover Messe."

Köckler's assessment is positive: "Among other things, we now know that we can also reach completely new exhibitors and visitors via digital formats. If we transfer these findings to our physical events, we will maximize the reach of our trade fairs many times over. We are thus raising the relevance and appeal of the Hannover Messe brand to an unprecedented level."

From next Monday, all contributions will be available on demand. The exhibitor and product search will also remain online. This means that participants can continue to register and use the offer beyond the live trade fair week and get in touch with exhibitors and speakers by e-mail.

The next hybrid Hannover Messe will be held from April 25 to 29, 2022. The partner country is Portugal.