Messukeskus Helsinki has reported a record year, with more than 1.2 million visitors in 2015.
Last year, a record number of visitors, 1,251,279, attended exhibitions, meetings, congresses, corporate celebrations, and other events at Messukeskus Helsinki, Expo and Convention Centre.
This was around 100,000 visitors more than the previous year, and nearly 40,000 more than in the previous record-breaking year of 2003.
The most popular events among those organised by Messukeskus were the Helsinki Book Fair and the Wine, Food and Good Living event in October (79,961 visitors), the International Boat Show Vene Båt in February (73,017 visitors), and the Matka Nordic Travel Fair with the Caravan Fair in January (68,524 visitors).
The I Love Me event, held in October, had a record number of visitors to date, increasing its number of visitors the most of all events in 2015, by 16 per cent.
The number of events organised by guests grew significantly. Among other events, Messukeskus was the venue of choice for Supercell’s international ClashCon fan event, the Finnish Taxi Owners Association for their anniversary exhibition, and the City of Helsinki for Reaktori, a winter holiday event for young people.
The largest event brought by an outside organiser was the World Gymnaestrada 2015. For a week in July, this international gymnastics festival brought 180,000 visitors from around the world, and the economic impact of the event on the Helsinki Capital Region was €30m (US$38m).
Other popular non in-house organised events included the American Car Show, held in Easter time (50,000 visitors), the Koiramessut dog show (34,000 visitors), and the start-up event Slush, which made a new visitor record (15,000 visitors).
Messukeskus hosted 1,544 meetings, congresses, and corporate events in 2015. The largest international congress was ESERA, which was held in August to September and brought to Helsinki 1,300 science education researchers from around the world.
“We have worked hard to develop our digital services and our organisation. We will continue carrying out digital projects also in 2016, for example by updating our website and opening a new online service, eMessukeskus, for our corporate customers. Our aim is to continuously seek new ways to grow for our event business, and we will also continue to develop our fair- and exhibition-related media services by implementing 20 reforms requested by our customers,” said managing director Anni Vepsäläinen.
