The Hotel and Restaurant Equipment Show, HOREQ 07, closed its fourth edition with a huge commercial success, as certified by its participation numbers. From November 24th to November 27th 2007, a total of 340 exhibitors and 840 represented companies came to Feria de Madrid, booking 17 600 net square miles. Expectations for the event were confirmed by a signigficant number of professionals, a total of 17 144.

Another highlight, regarding participation, was the increase in the international size of the event, with a growth in the number of foreign visitors of 8.3% comparing with the previous 2005 edition (37 nationalities, mainly from Portugal, Italy, France, Germany, United Kingdom and Czech Republic). Furthermore, HOREQ 07 featured two important iniciatives: the I International Food Service Convention, EATIN’OUT, whose success make FIAB (Spanish Food and Beverage Industry Federation) and IFEMA want to organize a new edition (66 export companies and 24 import companies from 10 countries) and, within its parallel activities program, the I International Contract Forum (over 200 participating companies). Also, regarding training, the Spanish Hotel Equipment Importers and Distributers Asociation, IMEQHOS, talked about food safety in a round table on “The New Technologies of Food Safety Processes”.

With these data, and the exhibited offer, HOREQ confirms itself once more as a privileged forum for business in this sector, as well as an excellent platform to present the industry’s R&D effort. At the same level, it was confirmed by the professional visitors profile, above all considering that 71.9% had a high corporate decision power. More specifically, 40.9% were purchase managers and 31%, executives, reveals the company’s press release. Taking into account the sector they belonged to, one should highlight that the catering sector, with a representation of 17.34%, has increased its presence by 129% regarding the 2005 edition, that is, more than double.