Scan2Lead offers exhibitors a customised selection of products for digital visitor registration at the exhibition stand. The products can be booked individually or in combination. But which product is best suited in which situation? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each solution? Find out when it is best to use which Scan2Lead product!

Beacons, apps, sensors, smart badges and cameras enable the precise measurement of visitor flows, locations and behaviours of trade fair participants. Trade fair organisers hope to gain profound insights into their visitors with this multitude of data collected through the increasing number of connected devices at trade fairs. But what happens to the individual needs, hopes and desires of each visitor, are they forgotten? Is the Internet of Things (IoT) turning visitors into things?

Millennials will make up 50% of the workforce by 2020. They bring with them very different values and expectations. Millennials are a generation that means fundamental change. They care more about the experience than a brand. They grew up with amazon and Facebook and expect everything to be so easy, fast and fun. Does the trade fair industry need to work towards putting more of them in key positions?

Everyone knows the impact Uber had on the taxi industry, amazon on retail and AirBnB on the hotel industry. We have seen companies like Nokia, Blackberry and Kodak disappear from the market virtually overnight because they failed to jump on the “digitalisation” bandwagon. Could the same thing happen to the exhibition industry? Couldn’t a new entrant revolutionise the way trade fairs are run? Could someone come up with a simpler, cheaper, hyper-personalised and super-practical way to organise fairs without the traditional fair organisers and site operators?

Google, amazon etc. are fast, convenient, personalised and secure. In the trade fair industry, websites are mostly very slow (on average five times slower than a standard Google search) and people are happy when events successfully attract many visitors and they have to wait in long queues, while amazon has opened a shop where you simply take what you need and leave without being prevented from doing so by a checkout. Registering for an amazon account, for example, takes less than a minute. When a visitor wants to register for an event, it sometimes takes 30 minutes to answer seemingly useless questions. Some event organisers are working on their interfaces, but really few are working on significantly improving the customer experience.

Data protection laws are changing around the world and becoming increasingly stringent to protect the rights of individuals in an age where more and more activities are becoming digitally personalised. The European Union enacted the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in May 2018 and other countries are preparing similar regulations. But will these laws slow down the digital revolution, or will they actually provide an opportunity for online business by forcing it to adopt a more robust and clearer basis for digital services?

Artificial intelligence, augmented reality and many other digital technologies have matured into useful tools in the exhibition industry over the past twelve months. Nevertheless, a disconcerting feeling still arises when talking to executives from the trade fair industry about digital transformation. Stephan Forseilles, Tesi Baur and Gunnar Heinrich from the UFI Digital Innovation Committee discussed this topic with numerous representatives from the exhibition industry at the UFI Global Congress in Johannesburg and the European Conference in Verona and asked them to vote in real time on bold statements about digital transformation in the exhibition industry. Here are some of the most discussed topics and why there is still a worrying wait-and-see attitude.

There are some digital initiatives being reported in the exhibition industry lately: IT departments are growing almost everywhere, budgets are increasing and job titles that are quite new to the trade fair business are emerging. A “Chief Digital Officer” and a team with a start-up attitude seem to be a must-have. And it is also a must-do to talk about all these efforts, especially with the board.

Driven by key players such as Apple, Facebook or entire industries such as the gaming industry, various technologies such as virtual reality and augmented reality are becoming increasingly popular. But how will these technologies affect the exhibition industry and are they a real threat to the industry?