However, whether you’re visiting or exhibiting, the costs and irritations of a trip to Munich start piling up well before you arrive. For exhibitors, the first big hit to the wallet comes with the costs of stands. For those with the biggest presence, these can reach towards €10m a show for the stand alone, before factoring in the cost of all that equipment going unused for weeks at a time.

For visitors, the most obvious problem is the lack of a place to sleep. Munich is a beautiful city, but it is quite simply not big enough to host a show of this size. Even if you book your hotel three years in advance, you’re going to find yourself paying four or five times over the rate charged at any other time. Even then, you’ll be lucky to have a shower to yourself, or space to open your suitcase.

For many exhibitors, it’s increasingly hard to argue the case that you need to be at the big European show. One pointed out to me that, from a time when crane sales country league tables were dominated by Europe, now only three of the top ten markets are in the region. Even Germany, birthplace and home of the most high featured cranes, is, at best, stable.

Compared with when the show launched, the world is a smaller place. Customers no longer need to ration their travel to a single trip to Munich or Las Vegas every three years. It’s far cheaper to fly a hundred of your best customers to your factory, and have them as a captive audience for your sales team, than to ship your newest cranes to a fairground full of school kids and tyre kickers.

There are some manufacturers with dozens of sales rooms and 1,000 deal targets. But while you may pick up an excavator on a whim, no one is pitching up in Munich with an eight-figure line of credit and orders to buy half a dozen new cranes.

So, what’s the point? Well, those staggering stand costs and fleets of cranes may, perversely, be one. Whether you’re demonstrating your longevity, or indicating your commitment to a new market, a big stand says you’ll be around when a customer wants their crane serviced.

You could achieve much the same by shipping a few pallets of Euro notes to the fairground, and letting them blow away across the outside area. But that would miss the second benefit: while you’re not going to find many customers buying on the spot, a stand full of innovative cranes might give you a starting point for a deal next time your customers are investing in their fleets.

Finally, it is a good way to catch up with everyone you know in the industry, in the space of a few days, while enjoying the backdrop of great beer, endless supplies of pork products, and charming regional dress.

Will North Editor
wnorth@cranestodaymagazine.com