ShanghaiJune 24, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — From October 13-15, 2026, the annual grand event for the South China catering and hotel industry, the 2026 Shenzhen International Hotel & Catering Expo, will make a renewed debut at the Shenzhen World Exhibition & Convention Center.
This year’s expo will cover an exhibition area of 200,000 square meters, bringing together over 2,000 high-quality exhibitors from around the world across ten major sectors: Coffee & Tea, Beverage Comprehensive, Food & Catering Ingredients Comprehensive, Catering Equipment, Tableware, Private Label & OEM, Bakery, Desserts & Light Meals, Alcoholic Beverages Comprehensive, Gifts & Lifestyle, and Group Meal Supply Chain. Concurrently, it will host over 20 professional competitions, themed forums, and popular market events, expected to attract over 150,000 professional buyers globally to visit, inspect, negotiate, and purchase.
The expo is anchored in four core directions: Expanding Foreign Trade・Smart Chain Procurement・Retail Breakthrough・Trendsetting Premieres. Leveraging Shenzhen’s core location in the Greater Bay Area, its foreign trade industry advantages, fertile ground for new retail e-commerce, and youthful innovation ecosystem, it opens up four growth tracks: overseas sales, local centralized procurement, retail channel expansion, and new product launches. It covers the entire chain of hotels, catering, coffee & tea, baking, and retail supplies in one stop, building a professional trade platform for exhibitors to achieve precise matching, efficient conversion, and long-term growth.
The 2026 HOTELEX Shenzhen exhibition schedule will be adjusted from December to October, further strengthening the expo’s foreign trade attributes. The timing not only locks in the golden procurement period of the fourth quarter but also aligns with the important procurement window of the Canton Fair, enabling further integration of high-quality procurement resources from home and abroad. The expected increase in high-quality overseas buyer attendance is over 50%.
The expo will continue to focus on the needs of overseas professional buyers, preparing over 20 various forums, competitions, special exhibition zones, production-marketing matchmaking events, and market activities. This will help exhibitors expand overseas orders, secure local key accounts, open retail channels, launch trendy new products, and seize the development dividends of the South China and even national catering and hotel industry in 2026.
1. Expanding Foreign Trade: China’s Hub Platform for Hotel Supplies and Equipment Export
Shenzhen has not only become a crucial springboard for Chinese hotel and catering brands going global but also one of the preferred destinations for overseas buyers, including overseas catering groups, supply chain heads of overseas-bound catering enterprises, cross-border e-commerce selectors,overseas hotel engineering contractors & regional distributors, to connect with domestic projects.
This expo focuses on the expansion of foreign trade in the domestic hotel and catering industry, building a China Hub Platform for Hotel Supplies and Equipment Export. It precisely targets emerging overseas markets in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, Europe, and globally. By creating a one-stop export procurement matching scenario for all categories of hotel and catering supplies, it gathers overseas end buyers at the expo venue, helping exhibitors directly engage with overseas end buyers and secure centralized overseas procurement orders.
Addressing the precise needs of current overseas professional buyers, the expo has meticulously sorted industry resources. Under the guidance of the “Expanding Foreign Trade” concept, it has curated key exhibits for overseas professional buyers. Key exhibit categories include:
- Smart Kitchen Equipment: Cooking robots, commercial dishwashers, ice machines, ovens, proofing cabinets
- Stainless Steel Commercial Equipment: Worktables, shelves, sinks, exhaust systems
- Export Tableware: Stainless steel cutlery, ceramic ware, glassware, high-end hotel tableware
- Cold Chain Equipment: Commercial refrigerators, freezers, worktops, display cabinets
- Bakery Equipment: Commercial ovens, dough mixers, proofing cabinets, baking molds
- Coffee & Tea Equipment: Commercial coffee machines, espresso machines, grinders, tea brewers, milk frothers
- Food Ingredient Export: Prepared foods, compound seasonings, baking ingredients, tea ingredients, coffee beans
- Hotel Supplies: Guest room supplies, guest room appliances, hotel linen & uniforms, etc.
- Smart Hotel Solutions: Hotel locks, switch panels, delivery robots, hotel guest control systems
- Building & Decoration: Prefabricated wall/flooring, bathroom fixtures, stone, carpets, lighting fixtures, etc.
- Cleaning & Sanitation: Cleaning equipment & accessories, sanitation facilities, cleaning supplies, stone care, etc.
Leveraging Shenzhen’s unique foreign trade location advantages and the expo’s deep accumulation of overseas resources, this expo deeply empowers the “Expanding Foreign Trade” of the domestic hotel and catering industry. It aims to build an efficient foreign trade expansion platform for one-time connection with a massive number of stable overseas orders globally, opening up a sustainable second growth curve for enterprises.
2. Smart Chain Procurement: Core Platform for Centralized Procurement of Smart Manufacturing in the Greater Bay Area Catering Industry
Currently, the demand for digital transformation in the Greater Bay Area’s hotel and catering industry is exploding, and intelligent centralized procurement has become a standard upgrade path for the industry. Relying on the Greater Bay Area’s complete smart manufacturing industry cluster, Shenzhen gathers national chain catering headquarters, central kitchen factories, and coffee & tea brand headquarters, making it the preferred city for catering enterprises to conduct one-stop centralized procurement of smart equipment, digital systems, and complete central kitchen production lines.
This expo focuses on smart chain procurement, which is key to enterprise cost reduction and efficiency improvement. Anchored in the Greater Bay Area’s smart industry advantages and the wave of catering intelligent upgrades, it creates a core platform for centralized procurement of smart manufacturing in the Greater Bay Area catering industry. It builds vertical centralized procurement matching channels for chain catering enterprises, coffee & tea brands, prepared food smart factories, group meal central kitchens, and catering intelligent procurement heads. It connects equipment manufacturers directly with end brands, eliminating intermediate circulation links, helping buyers conduct one-stop price comparison, sample testing, and implementation of complete smart renovation plans, achieving cost reduction, efficiency improvement, and standardized production upgrades.
Centered on the core positioning of smart chain procurement, the expo integrates smart manufacturing exhibits across all tracks, covering all-scenario catering upgrade needs:
- Smart Coffee Equipment: Fully automatic espresso machines, IoT grinders, unmanned coffee vending machines
- Smart Tea Beverage Equipment: Smart tea brewers, automatic fructose dispensers, smart sealers
- Smart Kitchen Systems: AI cooking robots, IoT combi steamers, commercial automatic dishwashers
- Smart Cold Chain Equipment: Smart commercial refrigerators, IoT display cabinets, smart ice machines
- Smart Bakery Equipment: Smart ovens, IoT dough mixers, smart proofing cabinets
- Central Kitchen Production Lines: Washed vegetable processing lines, automatic packaging equipment, smart cooking lines
- Catering Digital Systems: Back-of-house smart management systems, energy consumption monitoring platforms, product standardization software
Leveraging the Greater Bay Area’s smart equipment cluster advantages and the massive procurement needs of chain catering, the 2026 HOTELEX Shenzhen expo uses digital and intelligent centralized procurement as its core driver. It creates a one-stop smart equipment procurement hub covering back-of-house, central kitchen, and beverage tracks, helping catering brands complete smart manufacturing upgrades and build long-term cost and standardization competitive barriers.
3. Retail Breakthrough: Platform for Catering Food New Retail Channel Expansion
This expo leverages Shenzhen’s strong consumption and e-commerce industry advantages to build a platform for the hotel and catering industry to break into retail. It focuses on diverse retail tracks such as instant retail, live-streaming e-commerce, community group buying, private domains, and supermarkets. It gathers platform selectors, group leaders, and private label operators, opening the shortest path from factory to retail terminal for prepared catering food, beverages, and light meals. This helps exhibitors break free from traditional B-end competition and open up a second growth curve in C-end retail.
Addressing the diverse needs of new retail channels, the expo plans a complete retail-oriented exhibit matrix:
- Retail Coffee Products: Drip bags, freeze-dried coffee powder, coffee liquid, ready-to-drink coffee cans
- Retail Tea Products: Tea bags, cold brew tea, tea concentrate, ready-to-drink tea
- Retail Bakery Products: Pre-packaged bread, frozen dough, ready-to-eat cakes, cookie gift boxes
- Light Meal Retail Products: Salad prep packs, sandwiches, bento boxes, healthy light meal boxes
- Retail Pre-packaged Food: Single-serving pre-packaged food, microwaveable ready meals, self-heating food
- Unmanned Retail Equipment: Unmanned coffee vending machines, smart tea machines, self-service baking experience machines
- Gifts & Lifestyle: Designer coffee cups, pour-over sets, tea gift boxes, bakery cultural creative products
Relying on Shenzhen’s industrial high ground for instant retail and live-streaming e-commerce, the expo connects online and offline retail channel resources. It builds a one-stop platform for catering food enterprises to transform into retail brands, helping brands expand incremental channels and achieve simultaneous growth in both B and C tracks.
4. Trendsetting Premieres: Verification Platform for Youthful Catering Innovation
This expo closely follows Shenzhen’s youthful innovation DNA, creating a Trendsetting Premieres verification platform for youthful catering innovation. Targeting tracks like new tea drinks, new bakery, national trend catering, and sustainable packaging, it gathers emerging brands, equipment manufacturers, packaging design agencies, and trend buyers. It creates exclusive scenarios for industry new product launches, process testing, and trend verification, helping enterprises capture young consumer preferences early, quickly implement innovative products, and seize the first-mover advantage in trendy tracks.
Centered on the youthful innovation track, the expo plans a complete system of trendsetting exhibits:
- Trendsetting Coffee Equipment: Co-branded coffee machines, limited edition color coffee machines, mini portable coffee machines
- Trendsetting Coffee Products: Barrel-fermented coffee beans, cross-border co-branded coffee, special processing method beans
- Trendsetting Tea Beverage Equipment: National trend style tea brewers, transparent visual tea equipment, interactive DIY tea machines
- Trendsetting New Beverages: Functional beverages, plant-based beverages, low-sugar / zero-sugar beverages
- Trendsetting Bakery Products: National trend pastries, cross-border bakery, healthy bakery (keto / gluten-free / low GI)
- Trendsetting Tableware: Designer co-branded tableware, sustainable material tableware, modular combination tableware
- Trendsetting Light Meals: Plant-based light meals, functional light meals, regional fusion light meals, etc.
Relying on Shenzhen’s fertile ground for young consumers and its rapidly iterating innovation industry ecosystem, the expo builds a top-tier platform in China for launching trendy new catering products and verifying trends. It helps brands accurately understand the consumption needs of Generation Z and build differentiated competitive advantages through continuous product innovation.
5. Ecosystem Co-creation: Greater Bay Area’s Mega-Scale One-Stop Procurement Platform
Under the trend of personalized and diversified market demands, category boundaries are gradually dissolving. Category integration and supply chain reconstruction are imperative.
As an important part of the 4th HOTELEX Shenzhen Joint Expo, this expo is market demand-oriented and aims for ecosystem integration. With the core of “Two Major Theme Exhibitions + Ten Sector Linkages,” it connects high-quality supply resources from multiple industry sectors including catering, hotels, furniture, health, lifestyle, and machinery & electronics. It creates an ecosystem co-creation flagship one-stop super joint expo platform in South China. Through joint expo linkage and deep empowerment, it builds an ecological platform for panoramic exhibition display, promoting the interconnection and aggregation of resources from all parties, sprouting new ideas, and injecting continuous new vitality and energy into the future development of the industry!
6. Reserve Your Booth, Seize the Opportunity in the Greater Bay Area’s Trillion-Dollar Market
Whether it’s the unstoppable trend of intelligence or the new increment of foreign trade exports, Shenzhen is an undisputed bridgehead.
The release of the four themes – Expanding Foreign Trade, Smart Chain Procurement, Retail Breakthrough, and Trendsetting Premieres – precisely anchors the four main future growth directions: foreign trade, intelligence, omni-channel, and trendy innovation. From October 13-15, at the Shenzhen World Exhibition & Convention Center, join us at the 2026 HOTELEX Shenzhen Expo. Based in the Greater Bay Area, develop Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao, go to Southeast Asia, open up both domestic and foreign trade channels. It is the best choice for expanding new markets, connecting with global procurement, upgrading brands for breakthroughs, and laying out foreign trade tracks!
Prime booths are now hotly reserved. October 13-15, 2026, Shenzhen World Exhibition & Convention Center (Bao’an New Venue), 2026 HOTELEX Shenzhen Expo. We look forward to joining hands with you to deeply explore domestic demand, jointly explore overseas breadth, and seize the first-mover advantage in the South China trillion-dollar market!