The total attendance for last week’s TFWA World Exhibition & Conference surpassed the high of 2019, according to recently released figures.
The global travel retail exhibition saw 7,999 visitors attend the five-day event in Cannes this year, up 7% from 7,456 last year and from the previous high of 7,531 in 2019. Of the total visitors, 3,032 were “retailers and landlords” (up from 2,861), and 2,559 were distributors.
The show saw 482 exhibiting brand owners across the range of GTR-focussed industries, with around 26% of them in beer, spirits, wine and non-alcoholic beverages. This followed perfumes and cosmetics, which accounted for 34% of exhibitors.
There were 2,140 other trade visitors, including non-exhibiting brands, service concessionaires and marketing agencies, according to TFWA.
A total of 57% of visitors travelled from around Europe, with 17% coming from Asia and 11% from the Middle East, excluding Turkey. Specifically, France, the UK and Switzerland were the top three nationalities of those attending.
“This year’s event has been something of a paradox,” said TFWA MD, Franck Waechter. “Clearly our industry faces a number of challenges, but it’s evident that people have been really happy to come together, share experiences and work in partnership to address these issues.”
In March, the number of attendees at the ProWein trade show fell back by 10.6% on last year’s event, but still saw substantially more visitors – 42,000 – than TFWA’s event.
