COLOGNE, Germany — At the gardening lifestyle exhibition spoga+gafa, Koelnmesse GmbH launched CHEQ, a carbon footprint calculator that demonstrates the environmental benefit of attending trade shows.
“Since the COVID pandemic, travel activities have come under greater scrutiny,” Prof. Dr. Christian Glasmacher, a member of Koelnmesse’s Executive Board and its Senior Vice President of Corporate Development, said. “At the same time, we see how invaluable and irreplaceable face-to-face meetings truly are. B2B trade fairs offer the chance to make many personal connections in one place and in the most efficient way — which is a benefit for the climate. With CHEQ, we aim to empower trade fair visitors to calculate this benefit precisely and individually — providing a further incentive to plan trade fair visits with efficiency and sustainability in mind.”
How does CHEQ work?
CHEQ is a web application that asks users to provide the following information:
- Where they are traveling from
- What type of transportation they use
- What companies they’re meeting with at a specific show and which of those they would have otherwise visited individually
Next, CHEQ calculates the CO2 emissions for an attendee’s trip to an event and compares them to the emissions of individual business trips that they would have taken without the show.
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“It is designed to illustrate — on a very individual level — the positive environmental impact that a visit to a B2B trade fair has. Obviously, this is a powerful message for Koelnmesse and the entire industry,” Glasmacher explained.
Launching CHEQ
At spoga+gafa, held June 24-26, 2025, at the Koelnmesse exhibition center, the organizer promoted CHEQ with digital banners, floor stickers, giveaways and more on-site promotional tools. Also, the event’s team used geo-triggered push notifications on the official spoga+gafa app to reach attendees at key moments.
Lastly, CHEQ’s creators personally engaged with attendees on the show floor to explain the tool and get feedback.
“Although the tool is still in its pilot phase, the launch went very well,” Glasmacher said. “CHEQ works fast and reliably on mobile devices. The individual feedback we received was overwhelmingly positive. Many visitors were genuinely surprised to see just how much travel-related carbon emissions they had saved … Seeing this effect quantified for the first time often leads to a moment of realization — highlighting just how sustainable and efficient face-to-face networking at trade fairs is.”
Initial skepticism of some visitors, who assumed that CHEQ would be used to collect personal data, surprised Glasmacher. He noted that it is completely anonymous.
“While the tool itself is easy to use, the underlying idea can seem quite complex,” Glasmacher explained. “If you have never considered avoided carbon emissions from trade fairs before, the concept can seem abstract. Getting that idea across as simply and quickly as possible is something we will continue to work on throughout this pilot phase.
“It’s just fantastic to see that CHEQ is really striking a chord. We’ve all had this gut feeling that trade fairs are an incredibly efficient way to bring the right people together at the right time and place — and that by doing so, they can directly reduce environmental impact. Being able to break that down individually and see the personal effect so clearly? That’s a gamechanger. And hopefully, it’s just the start of something much bigger.”
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