Selling the show floor: booth pricing and the live plan
How trade fairs price stands, sequence sales, and turn rebooking into the largest single week of revenue in the year.
By Expola editorial · Exhibitor sales
Photo: Aaron Douglas / Unsplash
For a trade fair, the floor is the product. Stands are priced by size and position, sold by relationship, and rebooked, ideally, before the current show has closed. The fairs that grow year on year treat floor sales as a system with a live plan at its centre rather than a campaign that starts when the previous show ends.
Price the plan, not the list
A price list with three stand sizes leaves money on the floor. Position is worth more than size: corner stands, stands facing the entrance, stands beside the stage or the catering. Price zones on the plan, publish them, and let exhibitors see the premium and choose. Transparency shortens the sale; an exhibitor who can see why B-14 costs more than B-22 does not need a call to accept it.
Sequence the floor
- Rebooking: current exhibitors hold their stand for a fixed window, priced at this year's rate, opened on the show floor.
- Upgrades: exhibitors who want a larger or better-placed stand move next, before new sales open.
- Waitlist and new exhibitors: released stands and the remaining floor open to the waitlist, then to the public plan.
The order matters because each step frees the floor for the next. Fairs that run rebooking during show week routinely report 60 to 90% of the floor committed before the show closes.
Make the plan the point of sale
A PDF plan and an email inbox cannot run that sequence. The plan has to be live: holds expire, bookings colour in, prices show by zone, and an exhibitor can complete the booking with a card or an invoice request without waiting for a salesperson. The sales team's job becomes the conversations that need a human, which is the upgrade and the sponsor package, not the confirmation of a stand.
Sell sponsorship from the same catalogue
Sponsor packages are inventory too: a limited number of stage slots, lanyards, app banners and floor decals. Track them against the same record as the floor so that a sponsor's deliverables, invoices and the stand they also booked live in one account, and so that the team never sells a lanyard twice.
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