Korea’s Largest Food Exhibition Reports Record Business

14 June 2011

Seoul Food & Hotel 2011, Korea’s premier exhibition for the food, drink, hotel, restaurant, foodservice, bakery and supermarket industries, closed after four successful days on 29th April, 2011, with exhibitors reporting record business orders and enquiries. Seoul Food & Hotel 2011, organised by Allworld Exhibitions and the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency, KOTRA, attracted 1,089 companies from 44 countries, of which 359 companies exhibited in the International Hall. A new record of 45,331 buyers and visitors attended the show, with 7% of them attending from outside Korea.

Seoul Food & Hotel 2011 welcomes national pavilions from 19 countries with new pavilions this year from Argentina, Chile and Singapore joining the established giants from around the world. Exhibitor reaction to the event was universally positive and was typefied by comments such as this from Marc Devriendt, Investment and Trade Counsellor at Flanders Investment and Trade, who commented: “Seoul Food & Hotel 2011 was a success for us as we had many more walk-ins this year. The show is growing and going in a good direction. The quality of the show was higher than last year. We had a lot of interest from potential buyers looking for importing opportunities and doubled the number of contacts this year. Seoul Food
& Hotel is a good step for new companies to enter the Korean market.”

Catering for the specialist needs of Korea’s fast growing food industry, the exhibition also hosted dedicated Wine Korea and Meat Korea features with accompanying seminars and events. For the first time this year, demonstrating the Organisers commitment to the business aspect of the show, Seoul Food & Hotel ran from Tuesday to Friday, not Wednesday to Saturday. Commenting on this, Allworld Exhibitions’ Paul March said: “Resulting from the excellent cooperation that we have with Kotra, we have gradually moved towards a more complete business trade show model for the entire exhibition. This has been welcomed with open arms by our exhibitors and visitors alike, as was witnessed by the record business being done”.

Exciting developments also lie ahead for the next show in the series in 2012. The Kintex Exhibtion Centre, which was opened in 2006 to international acclaim, is soon to open phase two of its planned expansion. This will double the size of the centre to over 100,000m² gross of exhibiton space. Kintex is widely recognised as one of the finest centres of Asia, and its expansion moves it into one of the finest in the world. This will ensure that Seoul Food & Hotel 2012 will continue to develop, and retain its status as one of the world’s top food shows.

Promotion for Seoul Food & Hotel 2012 is well underway and a number of new pavilions have already confirmed to join the show. It will take place from 8th to 11th May 2012.

For more information, please contact us.