ITShub, the hybrid event announced during the Corona pandemic and planned to be held on 3 and 4 November 2020 at Dortmund Exhibition Centre, will now not be taking place. In view of the worldwide rise in SARS-COV2 infections over recent weeks, the fair organizers have decided to act quickly and cancel the event planned for the beginning of November. “The way infections have been trending over the last few weeks has unfortunately made our plans for this successful ITShub pilot considerably more difficult to achieve,” said Sabine Loos, Managing Director of Westfalenhallen Unternehmensgruppe GmbH.
This means that there will be no platform for the tobacco and smoking industry to convene at Dortmund Exhibition Centre this year. “This was our attempt to cater to the industry’s desire to have a platform this year for getting together and engaging in dialogue following the postponement of the two flagship exhibitions in September. In times when people are travelling less and communicating more online, a hybrid format seemed to us to be the most suitable way to give the industry this platform,” explained Sabine Loos: “Feeding the online part of a hybrid event with content for virtual visitors naturally requires a panoply of physical events, but the travel associated with being physically present remains a real challenge – especially for international participants – and in the end this is what led to the event being cancelled.”
Large numbers of people in the smoking and tobacco industry were quick to commit to participate as exhibitors at this innovative interactive platform in November. The concept has generated a great deal of interest, especially abroad, which is a great signal for Dortmund Exhibition Centre, as it underlines how important the annual get-together in Dortmund is for the industry. Dortmund Exhibition Centre is adhering to the concept of hybrid events and is currently examining – and will continue to do so in the coming weeks – the extent to which this format can be used successfully to supplement other trade fairs in future. “We can see the potential this format has for several fairs that are held here. Now it’s all about developing these possibilities and grafting them onto our core propositions,” added Sabine Loos, with an eye to the future of the trade fair business.