Automotive & mobility expos
A car expo is two shows sharing a hall.
A trade show for dealers, fleets and importers, and a consumer show that fills the same floor with people who came to sit in things.
Automotive shows carry the widest audience split in the sector: a trade event and a consumer event sharing one hall. Reporting them as one number is how a manufacturer files a bad show in a week your attendance broke a record.
Manufacturers and importers, aftermarket and parts suppliers, tuning and customisation, workshop equipment and diagnostics, EV charging and battery technology, fleet and leasing, and mobility startups.
Dealer principals and buyers, fleet managers, importers and distributors, workshop owners, fitters and technicians on trade days — and on public days, buyers deciding on their next car.
Where the money is
What decides whether a car expo makes money.
Where the revenue sits, why exhibitors here stop rebooking, and what makes the attendance number misleading.
01
Two audiences, and only one pays the exhibitor's invoice
Public days carry the ticket revenue; trade days carry the dealer and fleet conversations the stand budget was approved for. Report them as one number and the manufacturer files a bad show while your attendance figure looks excellent.
02
Stand budgets are a marketing line, reviewed every year
Automotive marketing spend is cut early in a downturn, and an exhibition line with no attribution behind it is an easy cut. The shows that survive that review are the ones that can show test drives and configurations, not atmosphere.
03
Ticket revenue here is the most perishable money you have
Consumer volume means arrival peaks, queue length and walk-up pricing move revenue more than the campaign does. A bad first morning costs the weekend and the advance sales for the next edition.
Exhibitor ROI
What your exhibitors actually count.
Every sector judges a show on a different number. These are the ones that decide whether a stand gets booked again.
Test drives booked and taken
The single number an OEM stand is measured on, and the difference between the two says whether your scheduling worked.
Dealer and fleet meetings
Trade-day conversations with a named dealer or fleet buyer, separated from public-day footfall so the number means something.
Configurations and enquiries
Consumer intent captured on the stand — a spec built, a brochure requested, a local dealer handover — attributed to the show rather than lost.
Playbook
How the good ones run it.
01
Separate the trade audience and price it
Trade hours enforced by badge category at the scanner, not by a steward's judgement. Exhibitors pay a premium for the hours when their buyer is not queuing behind a family, and that premium only holds if the boundary does.
02
Make the test drive a booked, scanned slot
Booking from the badge with a scan at the track gate turns the longest queue on site into a schedule, and gives every exhibitor a booked-versus-taken conversion rate to take back to their board.
03
Sell timed entry to flatten the arrival peak
Admission windows sold with the ticket move revenue off the first two hours and into the whole weekend. It is the single largest lever on consumer ticket income in this sector.
What the platform has to do
The automotive & mobility specifics.
- Trade and public days as separate badge categories with their own rules
- Trade-day results reported separately from public-day footfall
- Test drive booking from the badge with attendance scanned
- Timed entry windows sold at the ticket and enforced at the gate
- Consumer enquiries captured on the stand and attributed to the show
- Dealer and fleet meetings recorded against the exhibitor record
FAQ
Running a car expo.
See Expola set up for a car expo.
A demo built around your floor plan, your exhibitor mix and the deadlines your sector actually runs on.