In the dynamic world of private equity, staying ahead of industry trends and forging strategic partnerships are crucial for success. The hospitality sector, with its ever-evolving landscape, presents a myriad of opportunities for private equity firms looking to make impactful investments. As we look towards 2025, attending top hospitality conferences becomes an essential strategy for dealmaking, offering insights into market trends, networking opportunities, and potential investment avenues. Our curated list of the top hospitality conferences for dealmaking in 2025 serves as a vital resource for private equity professionals eager to navigate this vibrant sector.
Top Hospitality Conferences for Dealmaking in 2025
- National Restaurant Association Show
Location: Chicago, Illinois, United States
Date: May 17–20, 2025
Description: The National Restaurant Association Show is the largest annual gathering for the foodservice industry in North America. It showcases innovations across restaurant operations, kitchen technology, food trends, and hospitality services. For private equity firms, this event offers a panoramic view of emerging brands, scalable service providers, and technology startups revolutionizing dining efficiency and customer engagement. The show serves as a fertile ground to evaluate acquisition targets and partnerships in franchising, supply chain optimization, and digital transformation platforms in hospitality. With the U.S. restaurant sector rebounding and shifting consumer behaviors, the show is an ideal lens into high-growth investment categories across foodtech and restaurant infrastructure.
- IMEX America
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada, United States
Date: October 6–9, 2025
Description: IMEX America is the leading global trade show for the meetings, incentives, conferences, and exhibitions (MICE) industry. It attracts thousands of corporate buyers, hotel groups, tech providers, and destination marketers. For private equity firms, IMEX is a strategic vantage point into the evolving landscape of business travel, event tech platforms, and hospitality services. It presents early signals in demand recovery, enterprise meeting budgets, and digital engagement tools reshaping the MICE value chain. PE investors can identify SaaS players in event management, scalable venue networks, and customer experience enablers primed for roll-up or growth capital strategies in a resurging global travel economy.
- HD Expo + Conference
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada, United States
Date: May 6–8, 2025
Description: HD Expo + Conference is the premier trade event for hospitality design professionals, bringing together interior designers, architects, developers, and top-tier hospitality brands. It showcases cutting-edge materials, furnishings, lighting, and design technologies. For PE firms, HD Expo offers a gateway into the supply-side of hotel and commercial space development—ideal for tracking demand in adaptive reuse, luxury renovation, and boutique hospitality projects. Investors can uncover growth-stage design vendors, ESG-aligned furnishings manufacturers, and tech-enabled spatial planning firms. The show supports trend-mapping across upscale hospitality environments, unlocking investment paths into design-forward supply chains and experience-driven real estate assets.
- BDNY (Boutique Design New York)
Location: New York, New York, United States
Date: November 9–10, 2025
Description: BDNY is the leading trade fair and conference for the boutique and lifestyle hospitality sector, connecting interior designers, developers, and hotel operators with premium design brands. The show is known for its curation of high-end furniture, textiles, lighting, and technology-driven design elements. PE firms can gain valuable exposure to niche hospitality trends, assess investment-ready furnishing manufacturers, and evaluate specialty vendors driving experiential lodging growth. As lifestyle hospitality remains a high-yield asset class, BDNY offers unique insights into operator preferences, asset refresh cycles, and the design firms behind transformative hotel experiences—making it a powerful venue for scouting vertical integration plays and design-led rollups.
- HostMilano
Location: Milan, Italy
Date: October 17–21, 2025
Description: HostMilano is a global hospitality and professional catering exhibition spotlighting innovation in foodservice equipment, bar and coffee products, furnishings, and restaurant technology. It is a critical hub for identifying European suppliers, automation technologies, and smart kitchen solutions. For private equity investors, HostMilano serves as an entry point to evaluate industrial players in the food and beverage equipment ecosystem, many of whom are ripe for export expansion or digital reinvention. The show is ideal for sourcing roll-up strategies in niche manufacturing or aligning with ESG-ready producers of energy-efficient commercial kitchen systems—a growing segment in institutional and high-volume food operations.
- AAHAR International Food & Hospitality Fair
Location: New Delhi, India
Date: March 4–8, 2025
Description: AAHAR is one of South Asia’s largest food and hospitality trade shows, attracting stakeholders from food processing, equipment, hospitality supplies, and culinary innovation. It offers unmatched exposure to India’s fast-expanding hospitality infrastructure and modern retail food supply. For private equity firms, AAHAR presents investment opportunities across domestic production chains, scalable foodservice franchises, and equipment manufacturing. With rising urbanization and a growing middle class, the Indian market signals significant demand in cold chain logistics, quick service restaurants, and mid-scale hospitality development—making AAHAR a critical platform for discovering regional growth stories with cross-border scalability and consolidation potential.
- Florida Restaurant & Lodging Show
Location: Orlando, Florida, United States
Date: November 11–13, 2025
Description: The Florida Restaurant & Lodging Show is a key regional gathering of restaurant operators, chefs, suppliers, and hospitality professionals, focused on food trends, tech solutions, and operational strategy. For PE investors, the show delivers a focused window into regional U.S. growth brands, franchisable concepts, and supplier networks with national potential. Florida’s hospitality-heavy economy also serves as a test bed for scalable customer experience technologies and post-COVID consumer patterns. The show allows investors to assess early-stage players in food innovation, eco-friendly packaging, and back-of-house automation—offering a pipeline of targets for roll-ups or strategic partnerships in localized hospitality ecosystems.
- HITEC (Hospitality Industry Technology Exposition and Conference)
Location: Indianapolis, Indiana, United States
Date: June 16–19, 2025
Description: HITEC is the world’s largest and oldest hospitality technology event, bringing together hoteliers, technologists, and solution providers in property management systems, guest experience tools, cybersecurity, and payment processing. For PE firms, HITEC is a tech-forward lens into digitization trends within hospitality and real estate services. It’s an ideal venue to discover scalable SaaS platforms, automation startups, and API-friendly systems with recurring revenue models. As the hotel sector races to modernize, the event provides deal flow visibility into B2B tech stack providers—positioning it as a prime sourcing ground for both growth equity deployment and platform creation in hospitality tech.
- FHA-HoReCa
Location: Singapore
Date: April 8–11, 2025
Description: FHA-HoReCa is one of Asia’s premier hospitality events, showcasing innovations in commercial kitchen technology, hospitality supplies, bar systems, and foodservice automation. While its 2025 edition falls outside this year’s window, its 2024 showing offers a critical preview of regional trends. For PE firms targeting Southeast Asia, the event highlights the acceleration of hospitality demand across Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia. It offers exposure to mid-cap manufacturers, IoT-driven kitchen systems, and regional suppliers ready for global market entry. The show enables strategic mapping of OEM partnerships and investment targets in high-growth, export-ready categories within Asia’s maturing hospitality supply ecosystem.
- Hotelex Shanghai
Location: Shanghai, China
Date: March 30–April 2, 2025
Description: Hotelex Shanghai is a flagship hospitality and catering exhibition in Asia, covering the entire value chain—from kitchen equipment and tableware to coffee, food, and hospitality tech. It attracts over 200,000 professionals, including hoteliers, F&B brands, and import/export distributors. For private equity firms, Hotelex is a portal into China’s dynamic hospitality evolution, allowing investors to assess high-growth brands, equipment suppliers, and vertically integrated manufacturers. As Chinese consumer preferences modernize and urban hospitality infrastructure expands, Hotelex is key for identifying local-to-global platform plays, roll-up strategies in F&B manufacturing, and OEM opportunities across Asia’s hospitality equipment supply chain.
- Internorga
Location: Hamburg, Germany
Date: March 14–18, 2025
Description: Internorga is Europe’s leading trade show for the out-of-home food market, attracting restaurateurs, hoteliers, bakeries, catering companies, and food manufacturers. It is a critical showcase of European innovation in food trends, automation, sustainable packaging, and delivery technology. For PE firms, Internorga offers prime access to growth-stage foodtech platforms, ESG-ready suppliers, and digital ordering ecosystems aligned with changing consumer dining behaviors. With strong participation from DACH-region businesses, it’s an opportunity to explore regional market consolidation, strategic partnerships, and entry into Europe's fragmented but scalable hospitality technology and services sectors.
- Nightclub & Bar Show
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada, United States
Date: March 24–26, 2025
Description: The Nightclub & Bar Show—now branded as Bar & Restaurant Expo—is the go-to trade event for bar owners, nightlife operators, and hospitality entrepreneurs. It features educational tracks, bar equipment, drink innovations, and marketing tech tailored to nightlife and casual dining. For private equity firms, the show highlights high-margin, experience-driven hospitality concepts with strong unit economics. Investors can assess franchise-ready nightlife models, beverage brands with mass appeal, and marketing tech that bridges digital engagement with physical foot traffic. As experiential hospitality rebounds, this show offers a pulse on scalable concepts and vendor ecosystems ripe for capital deployment.
- Restaurants Canada Show
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Date: April 7–9, 2025
Description: The Restaurants Canada Show is the largest foodservice and hospitality event in the country, bringing together restaurateurs, food suppliers, tech companies, and culinary innovators. It’s the central hub for identifying Canadian food trends, franchising models, and tech solutions powering modern operations. For PE firms, the show offers direct exposure to early-stage concepts with national expansion potential, B2B food supply companies, and labor-saving kitchen technologies. Canada’s regulatory stability, coupled with its growing immigrant-driven culinary landscape, presents long-term investment prospects. The event also surfaces regional consolidation targets in mid-cap hospitality services and distribution networks across North America.
- The Hotel Show Dubai
Location: Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Date: May 27–29, 2025
Description: The Hotel Show Dubai is the Middle East’s most prominent event for hotel construction, design, and guest experience technologies. It spans interiors, lighting, bathroom and spa innovations, and operational equipment. For private equity firms, the show provides a front-row view into the Gulf region’s rapid hospitality development, driven by tourism diversification and infrastructure investments. It’s ideal for assessing suppliers positioned for large-scale procurement, Middle Eastern manufacturers expanding regionally, and international brands entering the GCC. The event offers insight into capital-intensive trends like smart hotels and wellness design, offering a platform for growth capital, JV structuring, and build-to-scale strategies.
- TRA Marketplace (Texas Restaurant Show)
Location: Houston, Texas, United States
Date: July 20–21, 2025
Description: The Texas Restaurant Show is the largest restaurant and foodservice tradeshow in the Southwest, bringing together chefs, restaurateurs, managers, franchisees, and consultants. It features kitchen appliances, new ideas, and culinary innovations. For private equity firms, this event offers a comprehensive view of emerging regional brands, scalable foodservice technologies, and franchising opportunities within the dynamic Texas market. The show's focus on innovation and industry trends provides a fertile ground for identifying investment prospects in restaurant concepts, supply chain solutions, and hospitality technologies.
- AAHOA Convention & Trade Show (AAHOACON 2025)
Location: New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
Date: April 15–17, 2025
Description: AAHOACON 2025 is the nation's largest event exclusively for hotel owners and operators, attracting over 8,000 attendees and 550+ exhibitors. The convention offers immersive education sessions and networking opportunities. For private equity investors, AAHOACON provides access to a significant segment of the U.S. hotel market, as AAHOA members own over 60% of the hotels in the country. The event is ideal for exploring investment opportunities in hotel ownership, management companies, and hospitality technologies that cater to this influential group.
- Catersource + The Special Event
Location: Fort Lauderdale, Florida, United States
Date: February 24–27, 2025
Description: Catersource + The Special Event is a premier gathering for catering and event professionals, featuring educational sessions, networking events, and a showcase of cutting-edge suppliers. For private equity firms, this event offers insights into the evolving trends in the catering and events industry, highlighting opportunities in scalable catering operations, event technology platforms, and innovative service models. The convergence of catering and event planning professionals provides a unique vantage point for identifying investment opportunities in businesses poised for growth in the hospitality sector.
- The Hotel Show Saudi Arabia
Location: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Date: April 8–10, 2025
Description: The Hotel Show Saudi Arabia is the Kingdom's largest and most important exhibition for hospitality professionals, focusing on the hotel, restaurant, café, and foodservice industry. As Saudi Arabia advances its Vision 2030 goals, the hospitality sector is experiencing significant growth. For private equity investors, this event offers a gateway to explore investment opportunities in the burgeoning Saudi hospitality market, including hotel development projects, foodservice ventures, and hospitality technologies tailored to the region's unique demands.
Beneficial Impact of Hospitality on the Economy
The hospitality industry plays a significant role in the global economy, contributing to job creation, tourism, and local development. Private equity investments in this sector can lead to enhanced operational efficiencies, improved customer experiences, and innovative service offerings. By injecting capital into hospitality businesses, private equity firms help drive growth, foster innovation, and support economic resilience. These investments not only benefit individual businesses but also stimulate broader economic activity, creating a ripple effect that supports ancillary industries such as travel, food and beverage, and entertainment.
Challenges Faced by the Hospitality Sector
Despite its potential, the hospitality sector faces several challenges that private equity firms must navigate. Economic fluctuations, changing consumer preferences, and technological disruptions can impact the stability and profitability of hospitality investments. Additionally, the sector is highly sensitive to geopolitical events and environmental concerns, which can affect travel patterns and operational costs. Private equity firms must also contend with regulatory changes and labor shortages, which can impact the scalability and sustainability of their investments. Understanding these challenges and developing strategies to mitigate risks is essential for successful deal-making in the hospitality industry.
Conclusion
As the hospitality sector continues to evolve, private equity firms have a unique opportunity to drive growth and innovation through strategic investments. Attending top hospitality conferences in 2025 will provide invaluable insights and networking opportunities, enabling firms to make informed investment decisions. By understanding the sector's impact on the economy and addressing its inherent challenges, private equity professionals can position themselves for success in this dynamic industry. Our curated list of conferences serves as a guide for those looking to capitalize on the opportunities within the hospitality sector, ensuring they are well-equipped to navigate the complexities of deal-making in 2025 and beyond.
