Around 247,000 visitors from 52 countries attended this year’s boot Düsseldorf, which closed on Sunday after a successful nine-day run. Attendance figures were up by 2.8% over last year’s edition, with 1,800 exhibitors spread across 17 halls in the Messe Düsseldorf exhibition centre.

Watersports enthusiasts were said to be extremely impressed, with 97.5% giving boot Düsseldorf top marks. Sailing and sailing boats are always the most popular segment of boot. They are followed in second place by motorboats, which in turn are followed by diving and accessories/equipment.

“Another very impressive feature is the strong interest in luxury yachts, which shows that we here in Düsseldorf have exactly the right clientele for this high-price segment,” says show director Goetz-Ulf Jungmichel.

More than 50,000 visitors came to Düsseldorf for the trade fair this year from European countries outside Germany and from overseas – a clear indication, says Jungmichel, of the leading global position held by boot Düsseldorf.

“We are the top boat trade fair for international experts in particular, since we cover the entire maritime community every year,” he says. “Since the exhibitors bring both boats and equipment to our event, visitors are in a position to obtain a realistic insight into everything that is available.”

The successful year enjoyed by the watersports industry in 2015 had a definite impact on the trade fair this year, with both private watersports enthusiasts and trade visitors keen to invest. “We are very satisfied,” says Jürgen Tracht, director of German watersports association BVWW. “Boot gave our industry major additional momentum, which will be producing positive results in the course of the year. This is clear confirmation of the forecasts we made before the event.

“We are expecting the uptrend in the watersports industry to continue in future as well. Almost 90% of the companies anticipate that the market will be expanding even more in the coming two to three years. The maritime economy is demonstrating impressive stability, with single-digit growth rates in practically all market sectors.”

After the trade fair, Goetz-Ulf Jungmichel is passing the helm of boot Düsseldorf on to Petros Michelidakis. Jungmichel, who has been responsible for running the watersports trade fair since mid-2008, will be leaving Messe Düsseldorf at the end of February 2016 to take up the position of secretary general and director of the German Sailing Association (DSV) in Hamburg. He will continue to be associated with boot Düsseldorf in view of the role that the DSV plays as one of the organisations behind the project.

Michelidakis is an experienced trade fair manager, who – among other assignments – has been working successfully for Messe Düsseldorf for years now in the foreign representatives network with responsibility for Greece.

Next year’s boot Düsseldorf is scheduled to run from January 21-29, 2017.

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