News & Press
Can you combine registration for co-located shows?
The co-location of trade shows is one of the hottest
trends in the exhibition industry today.
With corporate cutbacks limiting the number of buyers sent to a
show, tradeshow managers have responded by pairing with other exhibitions
that have similar, but different audiences. The hope is that the
attendance attracted by the combined shows will be more than the
total each attracted independently.
But what about registration? How do you handle pre and onsite registration
when each of the co-located shows wants different information from
their attendees?
To help solve these challenges, management of the Food Marketing
Institute (FMI), The Fancy Food Shows (NASFT), All Things Organic,
and United Produce shows brought in CompuSystems, Inc. (CSI) to
handle their combined registrations for their May 1-3, 2004 co-located
shows at Chicago’s McCormick Place. Registrants from more
than 100 countries were expected to visit the more than 2,000 combined
exhibits and to attend the many educational and social offerings.
The FMI and Fancy Food Shows had first co-located at McCormick Place
in 2002. Each show honored each other’s badges on the exhibit
hall floor. In 2004, these shows were joined by the All Things Organic
and United Produce shows. As the registration service provider for
all the shows, CSI was challenged by the associations to develop
a registration solution that would allow each association to process
advance registrations according to their specific needs, while onsite
consolidating the registration area into a single location that
could service all registrants seamlessly.
CompuSystems’ solution was to create five separate registration
databases controlled by one system for each association’s
pre-registrants and for buyers who registered onsite.
“In many ways, combining registration systems is like trying
to integrate five different accounting systems,” said Paul
McCaffray, CSI COO. “What made it possible for CSI is that
we have one data model that contains information about all the shows
for whom we handle registration. This common data model allowed
us to set up a combined registration system onsite while protecting
the integrity of each show’s advance registrations.”
“The onsite registration was the only area where the associations
had to make any compromises in the information they gathered,”
McCaffray said. “Everyone had to agree on a universal registration
form.”
Each association had their own show specific badges for advance
registrations. To facilitate the processing of the different badges
during registration, each of the 60 registration stations had immediate
access to all five registration databases. Thirty-five badge printers
were on hand so that each badge could be printed on the appropriate
badge stock.
“The number of details that CSI had to build into the system
was amazing,” said Stephanie Morris, Registration Director
for the National Association for the Specialty Food Trade (The Fancy
Food Shows). “But all in all, it worked well. We liked being
able to access the names of everyone who registered onsite, no matter
what show they were initially attending. Our attendees enjoyed not
having to wait in a specific line to register onsite since each
registration terminal could access all four databases.”
“The registration process onsite worked very well for us as
well,” said Toni Mascaro, Director, Convention Administration
for The Food Marketing Institute. “Best of all, our industry
exceeded its expectations due to the co-locating the shows. Our
companies brought more attendees than usual so that they could spread
out and cover more of the show.
For more information, please contact Chris Williams at 708-344-9070,
ext. 202 or visit the company website at www.compusystems.com.
|
