Key takeaways
- The alugha hannover messe app was the official mobile fair guide for HANNOVER MESSE, the world’s biggest industrial technology event, delivered for iOS, Android, and as a web app for any device.
- One guide, every visitor: a fair with an international audience needs a guide that speaks more than one language, exactly the problem alugha was built to solve.
- Multilingual video sat at the centre: every language track lived on the same file, so a visitor picked a language in the player instead of hunting for a separate clip.
- Accessibility travelled with it: the same approach that adds languages also adds subtitles, which makes media usable in noisy halls and for people with hearing impairments.
- The pattern still holds: one source video, many languages, hosted under EU data protection, is the same model alugha ships today.
The alugha hannover messe app: a mobile guide for the world’s biggest tech fair
HANNOVER MESSE is the official mobile fair guide to the world’s most important technology event, and the app put that guide in every visitor’s pocket. It shipped on iOS, on Android, and as a web app that ran on any phone or tablet with a browser, so nobody was locked out by their device. The point was simple: take a fair the size of a small city and make it navigable from a screen in your hand.
The declared goal of HANNOVER MESSE is to be a platform for the interplay between all relevant sectors and technologies, and no other trade show presents the industrial value chain in such an integrated form. A guide for an event like that has to do more than list halls. It has to carry content, and content for a global crowd has to work in more than one language.
That is where alugha came in. The fair draws exhibitors and visitors from across the world, so the guide cannot assume a single language. alugha’s contribution was the multilingual layer: video inside the app that a visitor could watch in their own language, switched directly in the player rather than scattered across separate downloads. Visit HANNOVER MESSE, anytime, anywhere, on your smartphone, was the promise, and multilingual delivery is what made it hold for an audience that did not all speak German.
Why multilingual video matters in an event app
An international trade fair is a multilingual problem in disguise. Exhibitors want their message understood by buyers from dozens of countries, and a guide that only speaks one language serves a fraction of the room. Producing a separate set of videos for each market is slow, expensive, and falls apart the moment a detail changes the week before the doors open.
alugha approaches this the other way around. One video stays the source of truth, and many language tracks are layered onto that same file. The viewer picks a language in the player, and the guide serves every market from a single embed. There is no library of near-identical clips to keep in sync and no re-upload when a correction lands. For the team behind an event app, that means one asset instead of a dozen. The same logic now powers a video translation platform that businesses use far beyond a single trade fair.
Accessibility on the show floor: subtitles that carry the message
A trade-fair hall is one of the loudest rooms a video ever has to survive. Machines run, crowds talk, and announcements cut across everything, so sound alone does not reach a visitor standing two metres from a working demo. Subtitles solve that before accessibility is even part of the conversation, and they are the same feature that makes a video usable for people who are deaf or hard of hearing, or following along in a second language.
Because the languages and the captions ride on the same multilingual file, accessible subtitles are not a separate production job tacked on at the end. They scale with every language the guide adds.
What alugha contributed to the project
The work behind the mobile guide came down to a few capabilities that still describe what alugha does: multilingual content a visitor could watch in their own language, every language layered onto one source video so the guide stayed in sync, subtitles produced inside the normal workflow, and embed-anywhere delivery that dropped into the app and the web guide alike, the same way you upload a video to alugha and embed it once.
From a 2015 fair app to a video platform
The mobile guide was an early, public proof of an idea alugha has carried ever since: that language should be a setting on a video, not a reason to produce the whole thing again. What worked for a trade-fair audience in 2015 works for online courses, internal communication, and any team reaching people across borders. The other half of the promise is where the content lives. alugha hosts under EU data protection, so the same GDPR-compliant video hosting that underpins today’s platform is the foundation a project like this would sit on now.
FAQ
What was the alugha hannover messe app?
It was the official mobile fair guide for HANNOVER MESSE, the world’s most important technology event. alugha contributed the multilingual media layer, delivered for iOS, Android, and as a web app for any phone or tablet with a browser.
What did the alugha hannover messe app include?
alugha provided the multilingual video inside the guide. One source video carried every language track, so a visitor selected their language in the player, and subtitles made the content usable in a noisy hall.
On which platforms was the app available?
The mobile fair guide was available on iOS and Android, and as a web app for all internet-capable phones and tablets, so visitors could use it on any device.
Why does an event app need multilingual video?
An international fair draws visitors from many countries, and a guide in one language only serves part of the room. alugha keeps one source video with multiple language tracks, so a single guide reaches every market without a separate edit.
Is alugha video hosting GDPR-compliant?
Yes. alugha hosts video under EU data protection, so an event app, a brand, or an enterprise can deliver multilingual media to an international audience while staying inside a GDPR-compliant framework.
Project: the official HANNOVER MESSE mobile fair guide app, with the multilingual media layer by alugha. Published: 19 March 2015. More about the event is on the official HANNOVER MESSE website.
