Immo Messe Schweiz and OFFA will not take place in 2021 either
The Immo Messe Schweiz and the OFFA spring trade fair have now also fallen victim to the ban on events issued by the Federal Council. Both fairs could already not take place in 2020.
Since the Covid 19 case numbers rose sharply at the end of October, trade fairs and other public events in Switzerland, which were possible in the meantime with sophisticated protection concepts, are again generally prohibited. At present, no forecast can be made as to when event operations can resume at the exhibition center. Due to the necessary lead time of major events, Olma Messen St.Gallen has decided to stop the preparations for Immo Messe Schweiz and OFFA and to create planning security for all parties involved with the cancellation.
Immo Messe Schweiz was one of the first major events in eastern Switzerland to be prevented by the Corona pandemic in 2020. Three weeks before it was to be held, it was first postponed to the summer and later cancelled altogether. With the second cancellation in a row, the real estate and construction industry is missing an important platform for information exchange, product presentation and new customer acquisition in direct contact between suppliers and potential buyers, as the Olma Messen St. Gallen cooperative emphasizes in a statement. The next Immo Messe Schweiz is scheduled to take place from March 25 to 27, 2022.
The OFFA will also suffer the same fate. The spring fair had to be cancelled in 2020 due to the Corona protection measures, and the same decision will now follow in 2021. The cooperative wants to hold the next public fair from April 20 to 24, 2022.
For Olma Messen St.Gallen, the cancellation of the two popular fairs in the spring represents a further setback in its efforts to regain financial stability through market-generated revenues, the cooperative's statement continues. The near-total shutdown of operations caused a loss of about 80 percent of budgeted annual revenue, and the cancellation of the two fairs severely impacted the company's financial planning, it said. As a total loss of sales is expected until at least the middle of the year, the management and board of directors are considering further measures to secure the trade fair location.
However, the cooperative is confident that normality will return to the event business after the summer and that trade fairs and events can be held again in the second half of 2021 as planned.
