About HOTELEX Shanghai

HOTELEX Shanghai

HOTELEX Shanghai — the Shanghai International Hospitality Equipment & Foodservice Expo — is one of the world's largest hospitality and foodservice exhibitions. Held annually at the National Exhibition and Convention Center (NECC) in Shanghai, it is organised by the China Tourist Hotels Association with Shanghai Sinoexpo Informa Markets International Exhibition Co., Ltd. With a history of more than three decades in China's hotel, restaurant and catering (HoReCa) sector, HOTELEX presents itself as a high-quality "procurement hall" for the entire hospitality value chain: hotel and catering equipment, food and beverages, coffee and baking, and the services and technologies that support them. It is a flagship cluster event of the Tourism Plus Shanghai expo programme, supported by the Shanghai Municipal Administration of Culture and Tourism, and one of the three flagship exhibitions highlighted under China's 14th Five-Year Plan period for the sector.

History: three decades in the HoReCa industry

The show traces its editions to 1993, giving it over 31 years of history in organising exhibitions for the HoReCa industry. Its growth mirrors the transformation of Chinese hospitality: from a domestic hotel-equipment trade show it became an international platform as China's hotel chains, restaurant groups and café culture expanded. By its 25th edition in 2016, held March 29–April 1 at the Shanghai New International Expo Centre, the show covered 280,000 square metres — up 30 percent on the previous year — with close to 2,800 exhibitors and more than 126,000 visitors from 116 countries and regions, up from 101,500 visitors and 2,082 exhibitors in 2015, and more than 70 special activities including global coffee championships co-organised with World Coffee Events. Growth later required the show to be split into phases at some editions and, ultimately, to move to the larger NECC.

Organisers and official support

HOTELEX is organised by the China Tourist Hotels Association — the national association of the tourist hotel industry — together with Shanghai Sinoexpo Informa Markets, the Shanghai exhibition business of the international Informa Markets group (formerly UBM Sinoexpo). The show is supported by the Shanghai Municipal Administration of Culture and Tourism and guided by the city's tourism authorities, and it is positioned within the Tourism Plus Shanghai strategy, part of Shanghai's ambition to become a global hub for tourism, gastronomy and commercial innovation. That official backing, combined with Informa's international exhibition network, underlies the show's combination of domestic depth and growing overseas participation.

Venue and scale

At NECC, HOTELEX has reached a scale of 400,000 square metres across 14 to 15 halls. The 2023 edition hosted more than 3,000 exhibitors and attracted about 245,000 visitors. The 32nd edition, held March 27–30, 2024, drew over 420,000 attendees, including a record 15,761 international visitors — an 80 percent increase on 2023 — across 400,000 square metres and 14 halls with more than 3,000 leading brands and companies, and a programme of more than 50 forums and events. The 34th edition, held March 30–April 2, 2026, hosted 4,018 exhibitors and a record 303,576 professional visitors, including 18,431 from overseas — up 48 percent year-on-year, from 189 countries and regions, led by Malaysia, South Korea and Russia — with coverage by 392 media partners recording over 329 million online exposures. The next edition was scheduled to return to NECC on March 30–April 2, 2027.

Exhibition scope

The expo covers the entire hospitality and catering chain. Its 12-plus exhibit categories — 15 hospitality and catering sectors were presented in 2016 — span catering and kitchen equipment and supplies, central kitchen equipment, tabletop supplies, food ingredients and beverages, coffee and tea, bakery and ice cream, wine and spirits, food packaging, hotel supplies and amenities, textiles, hotel building, engineering and design, cleaning, IT and security, fitness and leisure, and franchise and chain resources. Exhibitors include manufacturers and brands of commercial kitchen equipment, coffee machines and ingredients, bakery systems and hospitality technology, while visitors are procurement professionals from hotel and restaurant chains, dining brands, cafés, bars, leisure operators and institutional caterers. The 2025 edition recorded over 30 percent international exhibitors, with leading brands from Italy, Japan, the United States and elsewhere.

Competitions, forums and events

HOTELEX is as much a skills and ideas platform as a trading floor. Recent editions have staged 11 professional competitions, from coffee to baking, from cooking to cocktail mixing, showcasing the skills of industry talents; earlier editions hosted four global coffee championships in China with World Coffee Events, and forums such as the FCSI-co-organised Central Kitchen Construction and Development Forum. More than 50 forums and events accompanied the 2024 show. For chefs, baristas and bartenders, the competitions confer professional recognition; for buyers and operators, the forums address the development direction of catering — new consumption formats, central kitchens, chain expansion and hospitality technology — making the show the sector's annual weathervane, in the organisers' phrase.

Sister editions across China

The Shanghai flagship heads a national series. Geo-adapted HOTELEX shows have been staged in Beijing, Chengdu and Guangzhou, and sister editions continue in cities including Guangzhou, Chengdu and Shenzhen, taking the format to regional hospitality markets across China. The series structure lets national suppliers follow the brand around the country's principal tourism and catering centres while keeping Shanghai — with its 400,000-square-metre scale — as the definitive annual gathering. The brand's longevity, with editions numbering into the mid-thirties, is unusual in the Chinese exhibition industry and reflects the consistency of its association-and-organiser partnership.

Role in China's hospitality economy

HOTELEX's scale is a function of the market it serves: China has one of the world's largest hotel and restaurant sectors, and Shanghai is its commercial capital. The show functions as the procurement point at which hotel groups and restaurant chains specify equipment and supplies, as a launch platform for domestic and international brands — 4,018 exhibitors in 2026 — and as a barometer of the industry's condition, with visitor and international-participation records closely watched. Its designation as a flagship exhibition within Shanghai's tourism strategy ties it to the city's wider ambitions in gastronomy and hospitality. For overseas suppliers, the combination of 300,000-plus professional visitors and an organised international buyer presence makes it the principal entry point to China's HoReCa trade.

Significance

Few hospitality exhibitions worldwide operate at HOTELEX's scale: 400,000 square metres, thousands of exhibitors and hundreds of thousands of attendees accumulated over more than three decades since 1993. Its trajectory — from national hotel-equipment show to a Tourism Plus Shanghai flagship with record international attendance in 2026 — charts the growth of China's hospitality industry itself. As the annual meeting point of that industry's buyers, suppliers, chefs and baristas, HOTELEX Shanghai remains the reference event for the HoReCa sector in China and one of the largest events of its kind anywhere in the world.

Its published figures chart that ascent concretely: 143,500 professional visitors and 2,352 exhibitors in 2017, after visitor growth of 22.3 percent that year; 2,800 exhibitors and over 150,000 visitors at the 25th edition in 2016; more than 3,000 exhibitors and 245,000 visitors in 2023; and over 420,000 attendees in 2024 before the record professional-visitor total of 303,576 in 2026. Each step was accompanied by physical expansion — 280,000 square metres in 2016, a two-phase format in 2018 to cope with growth, and the eventual 400,000-square-metre NECC footprint — a record of sustained, demand-led growth across three decades that few trade fairs in any sector can match.