Floor plan and booths
Draw the hall, divide it into areas, lay out and price booths by position, import an existing plan, and let exhibitors pick their own space from the live floor.
The floor plan is the thing you are actually selling. It decides your revenue, and it decides whether a visitor who walks in at the far door ever reaches the stand in the corner.
It is also the part organisers most often run on a spreadsheet and a PDF, which is where double-booked booths and last-minute renumbering come from.
How the floor is built up
Draw the hall
Walls, entrances, pillars, and the fixed obstacles a venue always has. You can draw it, or import a plan the venue already gave you.
Divide it into areas
A wing, a zone, an outdoor section, a startup pavilion. Areas are how you group the floor into parts that can be priced and sold differently.
Lay out the booths
Individually where the space is awkward, or as a block where it is regular. Booths always sit inside an area — a booth with no area has no position to allocate.
Price them
By size and by position, because a corner is worth more than a spot in the middle of a row.
The editor
A drawing surface, not a form. It has the tools you would expect from a floor plan: draw walls, drop in fixtures, place booths one at a time or as a repeating block, and measure anything against rulers that adapt as you zoom.
Import instead of redrawing
Venues usually supply a plan. Bring in a DXF or SVG and build on top of it rather than tracing it by hand — the measurements come with it.
Two conventions worth knowing before you start:
Booths are generated inside something. Ask for a block of booths and you will be asked which hall or room they go in. Booths do not float in undefined space.
Metres and feet are a display choice. Switching between them changes the labels, not the drawing. Nothing is rescaled underneath you.
Pricing by position
Price is set per booth rather than purely per square metre, which is what lets the plan reflect what a position is actually worth.
| Position | Open sides | Why it prices higher |
|---|---|---|
| Inline | One | The baseline — neighbours on three sides |
| Corner | Two | Noticeably more traffic for a modest premium |
| Peninsula | Three | Presence, and room for a real build |
| Island | Four | No shared walls, fully custom, the top of the floor |
Do not sell out at launch prices
Holding your corners and islands back for the exhibitors who commit late is usually worth more than filling the hall in week one. A floor that sold out immediately was priced too low.
Shell scheme or bare space
Decide per area, and price both:
Shell scheme arrives built — walls, a fascia with the exhibitor's name, lighting, a power socket. The exhibitor turns up and sets out their display. Cheapest for them, simplest for you, and constrained by design.
Bare space is floor and nothing else. The exhibitor builds whatever they want within your height limits. Every impressive stand you have seen was bare space.
How exhibitors choose
Exhibitors pick from the live plan while signing up. They see the hall, what is already taken, and where they would be — not a list of booth numbers with no context.
Because the choice is made against the real floor, two exhibitors cannot end up holding the same booth. Choosing holds the position; paying settles it.
What to check before you publish
The show's website
Every show gets a public site on its own address, with your branding, the floor plan, exhibitor and sponsor directories, and the sign-up flow — and it changes what it sells as the show progresses.
Categories & packages
Define who may exhibit or sponsor, what each class of participant can buy, and how custom categories let one floor carry several kinds of participant at different prices.