Products and Services: Simplifying Show Managers' Jobs

Staff -- Tradeshow Week, 7/18/2005

Technological advances offer good news for show managers, as new products make their jobs easier. Only a luddite (one opposed to technological progress) would object to the advantages the following items offer for a range of management tasks — from selling exhibit space to helping attendees find the new products they need.

There is relief in sight for the thankless task of gathering information for show exhibitor guides.

Guide Builder's myshowguide.com automatically generates reminders to exhibitors to submit listing information, with increasing urgency as deadlines approach. The system stops sending reminders to exhibitors who respond, and exports the information they submit for page layout and design. Filters and export tools import information into layout programs. Exhibitors can also update their own information and upload company logos online.

The software can handle any number of exhibitors and be adapted from one show to the next. Exhibitors can also capture their information to use for future shows on myshowguide.com.

Prices start at $395 for a six-month term that can reach up to 50 exhibitors.

IDG World Expo is among Guide Builder's customers.

Contact Adam Pemberton at (203) 665-0351 or visit http://www.myshowguide.com.

A company called ListeNation is helping successful shows keep the personal touch that charms participants in smaller events.

ListeNation promises the capability of leaving personalized messages on the voice mail of up to 1 million individuals a day.

The Assn. of Woodworking and Furnishings Suppliers recently used a ListeNation message recorded by Show Director Angelo Gangone to help promote attendance at this month's AWFSVegas. Within 48 hours of sending the message to 6,442 potential attendees, 207 attendees had registered for the show.

Contact Ray Baum at (888) 232-0028.

Show managers can help attendees cut through the clutter and find the new products they're after with Tradeshow Multimedia's EZ-Exposcanner.

The company gives buyers a handheld bar-code scanner (a simple key fob on a lanyard) to browse new product areas and scan bar codes on the products they like. When they turn in the scanners, they get a detailed printout of the products they selected, so they can make a beeline for those booths.

Reed Exhibitions and Ace Hardware are among the firm's clients. At some shows, like Reed's PGA Merchandise Show, the top 10 scanned products are published in the show daily. Other organizers use the lists to upsell frequently scanned companies to larger spaces. Printouts can also be sent to attendees after the show as reminders. And when an attendee enters a booth with an EZ-Exposcanner printout in hand, it demonstrates the value of participating in new product areas.

Contact Anne Abbott at (440) 446-9483.

Online hotel reservation systems aren't just about housing anymore.

Take Travel Technology Group's EnCompass and TravelHero's EventHero, for instance. Both have handled event housing through an online system integrated with show Web sites.

EnCompass offers car rentals, concierge services and additional Internet hotel inventory through the Sabre global distribution system, along with individual or group reservation options and simple-click changes between multiple languages. The system also manages complex group and sub-block inventories and makes real-time group changes.

Another nifty feature: using room-search criteria to simultaneously find the best airfares.

According to TravelHero, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and San Francisco are among the destinations encompassed by EventHero's 100,000 properties worldwide. The system manages multiple room blocks at one or more properties.

Contact TTG's Derek Britton at (312) 527-7323 or TravelHero's Barry Nakano at (480) 603-3545.

A2zShow promises to help reduce exhibit sales time with an online system that lets exhibitors review floorplans, select booths and pay for them in as little as five minutes.

One recent client, the Natl. Defense Industrial Assn., used the system to automate space sales for its 30 tradeshows, including one Tradeshow Week 200 event. NDIA executives said they liked the fact that nobody needed to contact the association to find out if a booth was available, because the floorplan was updated as each booth was sold.

According to a2z, NDIA sold $2 million worth of space in its first week of using the system, compared to the usual $500,000.

The system also features conference and speaker management, financial reports, integration with in-house accounting, and customer relationship management and computer-aided design systems.

Contact Michael Hatch at (410) 740-9200, ext. 100.