Around 13,000 visitors flocked to Fespa Digital 2011 during the show, which was a marked increase of almost 40% over the Amsterdam show in 2009, which achieved approximately 9,000 individual visitors over the whole event.

Felton said: "Everything that I’ve seen, with regard to visitors and exhibitors, proves how passionate the industry is about Fespa.

"Given what happened on Wednesday, with the ash cloud, we were still up on Amsterdam at the same stage. That’s a pretty positive sign considering they closed the airport for six hours."

Despite disruption caused by the eruption of the Grímsvötn volcano in Iceland, more than 5,000 visitors attended day two of the show, 3,000 of whom had not attended the first day of the show.

Prior to the show, pre-registrations were 22,000, around 7,000 more than at the previous Fespa Digital, and 58% of the sign-ups were from international visitors.

Felton was equally confident that Fespa Digital in Barcelona next year would build on the success of this year’s event, and revealed one of the focuses would be to further increase the event’s engagement with the media buying visitors.