Trade shows · 7 min read
Exhibiting at a travel trade show for the first time
What should I know before exhibiting at a travel trade show for the first time?
That the stand is the smallest part of it. The meetings are booked before you arrive, through the organiser's appointment system and your own outreach, and the return is decided by what you do in the week afterwards rather than by anything that happens in the hall.
Walking a show and exhibiting at one are different jobs. As a visitor you are looking for people; as an exhibitor you have bought a fixed position and the question becomes who you can get to come to it.
The cost is not the stand
Space is the headline number and rarely the largest one. Stand build, furniture, power, lead capture, flights, hotels at show rates, shipping collateral and the staff time of everyone standing there for three days routinely add up to more than the floor space did.
For context on the order of magnitude, one representation-industry write-up puts the cost to a hotel of attending a trade show at $10,000–$50,000 per show. Treat that as a range for planning rather than a quote — the organisers publish per-square-metre rates in their media packs, and those are the numbers to build a budget on.
We do not publish estimated stand costs for individual shows. Ask the organiser for the current media pack — a figure that is a year out of date is worse than no figure.
The meetings are booked before you arrive
Most large travel trade shows run some form of pre-scheduled appointment system, and many run a hosted-buyer programme where qualified buyers have their attendance paid for in exchange for committing to a number of meetings. Those diaries fill weeks ahead.
- Get the exhibitor and buyer lists as soon as the organiser releases them, and work out who you actually want before the system opens.
- Send your own outreach as well. The organiser platform is a booking tool, not a relationship — a buyer who already knows why you are worth twenty minutes accepts.
- Leave room for walk-ups. A diary packed wall to wall means the person who wanders past your stand at four o'clock meets a closed conversation.
Know the vocabulary you will be negotiating in
Trade shows are where rates and allocations get discussed, and the words carry precise meanings. The Edinburgh Tourism Action Group glossary defines a net rate as the "Gross or Best Available rate less the commission", and an allocation as a "pre negotiated number of rooms, places, seats held by a tour operator or wholesaler for sale".
One worth knowing about: FIT is used across the trade with two different expansions. ETAG gives "Fully Independent Traveller"; VisitWales gives "Fully Independent Tour" or "Flexible Independent Traveller". If a rate conversation turns on it, ask which the other person means rather than assuming.
The week afterwards decides whether it paid
A stand generates conversations. Conversations become business in the fortnight that follows, or they do not become anything. Budget time for the follow-up before you book the space — it is the part that is invariably underestimated, and it is where the money either arrives or does not.
Choosing which show
The right show is the one your buyers attend, which is rarely the largest. A regional expo where you meet nine operators who actually contract your destination beats a global fair where you meet ninety who do not.
RepBud keeps a directory of upcoming travel trade shows with dates, locations and who each one is for. Free to browse, no account needed.
