Business Climate in Germany’s Event Industry Worse than for Service Providers Overall

The business climate in the German event industry has been significantly worse during the Covid-19 pandemic than among service providers in general and the economy as a whole. This is the result of the ifo Institute’s new index for the industry based on responses from around 200 companies. The industry index stood at minus 2.2 points in October; for service providers in general, the figure was plus 16.5 points, and plus 13.6 points for the economy overall. “The event industry is certainly recovering – it’s up from the September figure of minus 12.8 – but it’s still lagging far behind,” says Klaus Wohlrabe, Head of Surveys at ifo.

More than half the companies described their order backlog in October as poor. However, most are hoping for rising sales in the coming months.

May 2021 was the first time the ifo Institute surveyed this industry. At that time, the figure was much lower, at minus 37.5. Problems during the pandemic meant that by June, 70 percent of the event industry businesses surveyed felt their survival was threatened. This proportion was considerably higher than for the service sector as a whole (20 percent) and for the German economy overall, where around one in seven companies (14 percent) saw their survival threatened in June.

The Business Climate Index for the event industry is being continuously expanded and can be obtained from the ifo Institute. The participating companies cover a wide spectrum, including catering, PR, equipment rental, temp agencies, security, trade show organizers, cinemas, discotheques, theaters, and other event organizers. This industry is not covered in Germany’s official statistics – a gap that has now been closed in cooperation with various associations by targeting new survey participants.