“Quality over quantity.” Was a message repeated time and again at last week’s ProWein. Richard Siddle assesses the role and influence of ProWein in face of falling visitor numbers.
First things first. I have an admission to make. I love trade shows. As a trade journalist there is no better way to spend three days than walking the halls of an international trade fair where your readers are doing business. Acting like a human sponge talking and taking in information from everyone you meet.
Taking advantage of the unique position you have to talk to producers, wineries and buyers from all over the world and hear first hand exactly what their challenges are and why they are at ProWein – or any trade show – and what they are looking for to help them fix those problems.
ProWein has proudly claimed to be the biggest international wine trade fair in the world but with visitor numbers with Wine Paris & Vinexpo Paris closing in fast it needs to work even harder to keep that position
Where buyers and producers do business is ultimately down to them. All international wine fairs can do is simply provide the platform, the stage, where they can meet. Whether they choose to or not goes way beyond the quality, volume and price of wine available to buy or sell.
The biggest trade shows are also at the whim of local hoteliers, taxi drivers, restaurant and bar owners that dictate so much of the bill a producer, or buyer goes home with.
That’s ultimately why the whole role of ProWein is being brought into question by hundreds of producers and buyers who for years have not thought twice about putting Dusseldorf into their March diaries.
For the first time it now has serious, credible competition not only from a rival trade fair – Wine Paris & Vinexpo Paris – but from one of the world’s most famous and popular capital cities – Paris. Crucially Paris does not care there is a major wine and spirits show taking place. The hotel, taxi and restaurant rates remain the same. You can get a sub €100 room a night, or a €1,000 a night room. The choice is yours.
You can eat in some of its most prestigious restaurants and drink in some of its most historic bars. As Humphrey Bogart once famously said: “We’ll always have Paris.”
Reinventing Prowein
With hotel prices seemingly going up every year accommodation and where you stay is an important factor now for producers and buyers attending the show
It’s a bit harder to make the same sort of claim for Dusseldorf, however charming its old town is. But for those that make the effort to go, ProWein is still very much a crucial three days for producers and buyers to get together, meet existing customers, find new partners and, most important of all, sell and buy wine.
Show director, Peter Schmitz, sums it up well: “No other trade fair offers as wide a range as ProWein. All international wine-growing regions are represented in Düsseldorf.”
That’s the key. For now at least. From Argentina to Lebanon, Austria to Romania,Brazil to Uruguay. Planet ProWein is still very much the platform where every wine producing country in the world can find its place.
Southern hemisphere producers have long been loyal supporters of ProWein – Wine Australia said it had over 500 people attend the masterclasses it hosted through the show
But it’s clear ProWein, and the producers and the country generic bodies that are firmly in its camp, are going to have to work harder and think differently if they are going to make sure their key target buyers continue to come to the show in the future.
Money talks and if the cost of doing business in ProWein does not improve – compared to the investment needed to go to Paris – then you can see things moving pretty quickly. If they have not already.
Certainly a lot more quickly than Messe Dusselforf and the ProWein chiefs would have anticipated going into this show.
This was the first ProWein that its director, Peter Schmitz, has personally been in charge of having worked for Messe, the show’s owners, for close to 40 years organising fairs all over the world.
He was perhaps in too confident a mood when we met in London in December about just what sort of threat and impact Wine Paris might have this year.
He told The Buyer then: “ProWein is still the number one show. Yes, we are facing new competition from Paris, but we can’t both grow all parts of the wine industry.”
Before adding: “Wine Paris is growing, but it is still mostly French producers, whilst ProWein is the whole world. I don’t want to sound arrogant, but when you are on top you are the hunted one. ProWein remains the true global wine fair.”
What the numbers tell us
Pro Spirits proved a key highlight of ProWein with spirits having its own dedicated hall
Schmitz made those comments on the back of the 36,000 people who went to Wine Paris & Vinexpo Paris in 2023, compared to the near 50,000 that went to ProWein.
That gap, though, has closed dramatically when we look back now on how the two shows have performed in 2024. Wine Paris says its numbers in February were up 14% to 41,253 compared to ProWein’s unofficial figures of 47,000, which is noticeably based on registered visitors and not the actual numbers that attended. It’s likely that figure will be lower due to the national train and airline strikes that took place, and clearly made an impact, on the last day of the show.
In two years Wine Paris & Vinexpo Paris has jumped from 25,000 at its post-Covid show in February 2022 to 41,253 now. Wine Paris says it now has visitors from 137 countries, whilst ProWein sits at 135.
Rodolphe Lameyse, head of Vinexposium and Wine Paris & Vinexpo Paris, was quick to stress how unprecedented the increase in international visitors to its show in February was –which saw a doubling (53%) in international visitors to 41% of the show.
Organics and sustainalbity were also two of the biggest themes at ProWein
Where ProWein still has the big edge is in the 2,000 extra exhibitors with 5,700 exhibitors from 61 countries, compared to the 4,074 from 48 producer countries at Wine Paris – up from 3,387 exhibitors in 2023 from 42 countries and 2,864 exhibitors in 2022 of which 13% were international.
All eyes will be on whether ProWein can maintain that healthy gap going into next year. The expectation, though, is that gap will close too. Quite how much remains to be seen.
And then there were two
Is Europe big enough to have two major international wine fairs within a few weeks of each other? Yes it is. Whether you choose to go and do business at both is down to you, but the exhibition companies behind ProWein and Wine Paris are actually now providing a unique service for the world’s wine producers and buyers. The chance to take advantage of two highly professional international trade fairs, and the opportunity to do business at both.
- In Part Two of The Buyer’s analysis of ProWein 2024 we talk to a wide range of producers and buyers to get their thoughts on the show, its future, but also what they see as the key challenges and opportunities for wine and spirits.
