01
The challenge
BuildTech Expo sold 420 stands through a PDF floor plan, an email inbox and a spreadsheet that three salespeople edited at once. Double bookings were common, invoices went out weeks after a verbal yes, and the plan on the website was always a version behind.
Visitor registration ran on a separate system that could not tell the team which exhibitors a visitor had scanned, so post-show lead reports were built by hand.
02
What changed
The exhibitor hub put the live floor plan on the event website. Exhibitors pick a stand, see the price for the size and position, and pay or request an invoice in the same flow. The plan updates itself, and the sales team sees holds, bookings and payments in one view.
Rebooking for the next edition opens on the last day of the show, inside the exhibitor's own portal, with their current stand held for 14 days. Sponsor packages are sold from the same catalogue with inventory tracked against each deliverable.
Visitor registration and badge scanning moved onto Expola, so every scan writes to the exhibitor's lead list in real time.
“Exhibitors book their stand on the plan the week the show closes. We used to chase them for four months.”
03
The results
92% of exhibitors rebooked for the following edition, most of them during show week. £1.1M of booth sales were booked online without a salesperson touching an invoice, and the floor sold out six weeks earlier than the previous year.
Lead reports that took the team two weeks after the show are now available to exhibitors before they leave the hall.
“The floor plan is the product now. Sponsors see it, exhibitors buy from it, and our team spends show week on the floor instead of in a spreadsheet.”
Daniel Whitmore, Exhibition Director, Northern Trade Shows
