In a letter to exhibitors and attendees, the organisers of Busworld Europe have announced that the 2021 event is cancelled. “With pain in their heart Busworld decided to cancel Busworld Europe 2021,” the Busworld team said in a statement. “For the Busworld Team, the event is more than just business, it’s a passion. When the customers are happy, Busworld is happy. Literally everything was done to avoid having to take this decision.
“But reality cannot be changed. And reality at this moment is that Busworld cannot fully guarantee its exhibitors that the visitors will join the show in October in the usual numbers. Because there is no way of predicting travel restrictions. And there is no way to measure the willingness to travel of the visitors with the negative impact of covid-19 on their business results for more than a year now. There is too much uncertainty.
“Although the prospects were positive in the beginning of the year, the promised speed of the vaccination campaigns , especially in Europe, were not met at all. And since the preparations to participate to a trade show start at least six months before the actual show takes place, there are too many question marks for our exhibitors.
“So, even though it would have been perfectly possible from a practical side to organise a trade show with the utmost respect for everyone’s safety, the bullet was bitten today and a sensible but tough decision was made.”
This would have been the event’s 50th birthday. The organisers said that the decision was made with full support of Busworld’s main exhibitors, who respected and agreed with the decision and all assured that they will be present at the next edition in 2023. Busworld said that some smaller, alternative events might take place in the ‘Busworld period’ of October 2021.
Busworld’s Mieke Glorieux concluded: “Our thoughts go out to the whole industry, who has suffered severely for over a year now. We said it before and we keep saying that we are all in this together! Today we bring you bad news, tomorrow is another day. We are agile. And we’ll be back!”
The next Busworld Europe is scheduled to take place in Brussels from 7 to 12 October 2023.
