The show floor plan is more than a series of boxes on a sheet of paper. It’s one of the most important elements of your show. Show staff use it daily in booth sales, exhibitors use it to determine their participation and placement on the floor, attendees use it to map where they want to go. Creating a floor plan that benefits each group’s needs is an essential ingredient in the success of your show.

Whether you use the same facility year after year or move annually, your floor plan continually evolves to achieve a variety of objectives. While restructuring your show floor doesn’t necessarily mean totally redrawing the blueprint, resourceful management of the plan can maximize the efficiency of the hall, affect positive traffic flow and create a functional environment in which to do business.

In the best of worlds, a show outgrows its space requiring another hall, floor or even an additional venue to accommodate an expanding exhibitor base. Or, worst-case scenario, space sales begin to shrink due to market consolidations or other factors, and mitigating the visual distraction of a leaner exhibit floor becomes a priority. Other factors that influence altering your plan may include the addition of special features — such as pavilion areas, demonstration stages, lounges and food service — or segmentation by industry or product categories. Whatever the reason, attendee and exhibitor needs should be paramount in any redesign.

Growing pains
Floor plan revisions are frequently a direct result of industry fluctuations. “Right now we’re seeing more growth situations than recessions, so we’re having to deal with ‘Where can we put more booths?’ ” says Linda Pilgrim, Assistant Manager Corporate Sales, The Freeman Cos., Chicago. “Finding more booth space can sometimes depend on what the show manager is willing to do.” For example, selling triangular, trapezoid or other odd-shaped booths can maximize floor space, particularly in a building with more angles, such as Houston’s Astro Hall whose three wings converge in an octagonal center. To optimize booth sales, the 365,000 square-foot Offshore Technology Show uses the octagonal space in a spoke design, and exhibitors build customized booths to fit that configuration.

In some cases, show organizers annex unconventional areas for booth space, such as halls, concourses or meeting rooms. But that can beg the question of how it’s perceived by exhibitors. “It depends on one thing,” says Tony Calanca, Vice President, Reed Exhibition Cos., Norwalk, CT. “How many attendees are exhibitors going to see, how much stuff are they going to sell? They want to be where the action is.”

Sometimes areas that appear unusable aren’t. For example, when Reed produced the Hardware Show at McCormick East and West, the show organizer made use of the 7 East level, which is basically a parking garage. “You would never book it to run a stand alone show,” Calanca says. Even though there was 120,000 square feet of conventional space sold in the West Building, “exhibitors who were booked into West would do anything to get onto the 7 East level because they considered it to be the main building.”

For many years the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), held in Las Vegas, has been accommodating exhibitor needs by selling exhibit space in hotel rooms, which have been cleared of their furnishings. The special venue, which began at the Sahara and currently occupies space at the Alexis Park Hotel, hosts close to 200 exhibiting companies. The product category dictated this unusual move. “They’re high-end audio products. So, acoustically, the exhibitors want a living room setting to demonstrate in,” says Robbi Lycett, Vice President, Arlington, VA-based CES. “We do a floor plan for the Alexis Park, which is actually the hotel layout with the room numbers, and exhibitors select their room based on the plan.”

Hotel rooms, parking garages and other unexpected areas as exhibit space point out how customer requirements often drive a floor plan redesign. In many instances, it’s a simple matter of supply and demand. “Your customers want to buy something your present floor plan doesn’t offer,” Calanca says. By redrawing, you can increase your saleable exhibit space.

Filling a void
When booth sales aren’t as high as expected or consolidating exhibitors take less space then usual, show organizers often have to conceal major blocks of unused exhibit space at the last minute. While slight adjustments to the floor and use of show decorations can disguise the void, exhibitor and attendee perceptions are prime considerations. “You need to cut the given space without making it look like there are big empty holes on the floor plan or there’s one lounge for every two booths,” says Pilgrim.

Independent operations contractor Cindy Keller, Streamwood, IL, suggests pulling the show in and disguising empty space by adding a hard-wall system to the back of perimeter booths. Other suggestions to overcome the problem include moving booths forward to different parts of the hall; creating additional cross aisles; widening the aisles; closing an air wall or hanging drapery to give the illusion of a wall; creating more island spaces and, yes, adding lounges where appropriate.

Traffic control
Since traffic in the aisles is the defining factor for exhibitors, especially those not located near the front entrance, organizers strive to maximize the exhibit hall for the most effective flow patterns. Creative traffic management is even more critical when expanding into additional space within your facility. Using your floor plan, in conjunction with special features, is one way to positively affect traffic.

“When you go to multiple floors or multiple buildings, it’s difficult to draw attendance through the newer areas,” Calanca says. “You can put registration, food service and other features in that area or open the new space an hour or half-hour earlier. In dramatic cases, if it’s a separate building, you can stagger the exhibit hours by opening that building a day earlier. Or, you can put a highly trafficked critical mass of exhibitors there, if you can get them to agree,” he suggests.

In 1996, when Chicago’s McCormick Place opened its South Building, the 600,000 net-square-foot Food Marketing Institute (FMI) show found itself all on one level for the first time ever, albeit in two very large halls about three-quarters of a mile apart. “Going from one part of the South Building to the other part of the North Building was an extremely long travel for any human being,” FMI Manager of Media Relations Sherrie Rosenblatt says. To facilitate attendee movement and traffic flow, FMI instituted a trolley tram in both halls. “We widened the aisles to accommodate the tram, and there were several stops along the way. It functioned like a beltway, and both the tram and the stops were sponsored.”

FMI also segmented the show with consumable goods in the South Hall and capital goods in the North Hall. As an incentive to visit both halls, an Industry Showcase was established across the width of the North Hall, where food courts offering free product samples from companies exhibiting in the South Hall were set up. The area also contained computers with Internet access, a historical pictorial, and a stage, which hosted mini-educational sessions and a live radio feed from a New York-based talk show. “It was more than a food court, it was a destination,” says Mike Smoyer, FMI’s Vice President.

The CES Show, which occupies space in four separate Las Vegas venues, made adjustments to the floor plan when a portion of the show moved into the Sands Expo and Convention Center. Concerned about traffic in the new venue, CES relocated the Innovations Display from the Las Vegas Convention Center to the Sands. The popular “excellence in design” exhibit, featuring more than 500 products, annually draws between 10,000 and 15,000 of the show’s 91,000 visitors.

Color coding
Color coding geographically themed areas is becoming a popular trend. The coding is especially beneficial for segmented shows or large shows in multiple halls and buildings. “Color coding and directional decor is being built into many floor plan designs,” says Ellen Beckert, Director of Corporate Development, The Freeman Cos., Dallas. “We do a lot with carpet. You may start out with three or four stripes in the main entrance and then the gold stripe will go toward the gold area, the red in another direction, etc. Of course, this is dictated by the size of the hall and/or show.”

Helping attendees easily navigate the show floor, color coding can augment on-site communications. “For example, if you’re going to be doing a product locator, it’s very helpful to indicate product areas using different colors,” says Beckert. An attendee’s time is very precious and limited. They’re going to try to maximize their time on the show floor, and you need to help them do that.” Providing attendees with a color-coded floor plan printout acts as a quick visual aid.

In a unique use of color coding, the Home Builders Show employed a “follow the bouncing ball” approach by utilizing different colored overhead balloon tubes, which traveled throughout the hall leading attendees to specific areas.

Location, location, location
Priority points frequently drive floor plan design, dictating size and placement of exhibits. Small or first-time exhibitors are usually at the bottom of the heap, so to speak, when choosing space. “There are a few exceptions to that,” says Calanca. “In some of our shows, in recognition of small, but long-time exhibitors, we draw a floor plan that has lots of booths in very good locations — blocks and blocks of them amidst giant islands. We call them ‘wetlands.’ In these wetland areas, booths can’t be combined and gobbled up by big exhibitors, so it automatically protects them for smaller old-line companies.”

Depending on the hall, exhibitor perceptions of a good location are as diverse as the number of shows. Of course, it’s impossible to create a floor plan where all exhibitors agree they occupy prime space. But when designing a new show floor plan, Reed’s Calanca uses an unusual, if unscientific, method to identify the locations most generally perceived as ideal. “If you have a rectangular plan that is deeper than it is long, i.e., shaped like McCormick Place as opposed to New Orleans, draw a triangle with the base going across the front of the hall and the top or point at the back or close to the back along the center,” he says “If you were to plot booths that were considered most desirable by your exhibitor base, you would end up with most within that triangle.” Regardless of the shape, knowing what your exhibitors perceive as ideal is a valuable tool when making adjustments to your show floor.

Idiosyncratic space
Halls with unusual configurations or elements can require creative use of the space. Pilgrim says, “If there’s space on the show floor, you want to make use of it in some form or fashion, regardless of how desirable or undesirable it may appear to be.” There are lots of halls with idiosyncrasies — halls with sloped floors that you have to level or shore up if you need the space, halls with built-in stages, etc. “Ask yourself, ‘How can I make use of this?’ ” she says. “ ‘Can I do a ribbon cutting or announcements, or prize drawings from it?’ ‘Can I put booths there?’ ‘Is it accessible for attendees, and what kind of hazards do you have in doing so?’ ”

If it can’t be made safe and functional, consider other practical uses for exhibitors or your organization. For example, a dead wall in a rear corner can be turned into a storage space to stash equipment, saving time getting materials onto the floor. “Not all space has to be publicly functional, but if it’s there, we like to make use of it. It’s too valuable,” Pilgrim says. “Designing a floor plan can be like working a giant jigsaw puzzle.” Although you have some flexibility with the pieces that make up the puzzle, you still have to work within the perimeters of the building, as well as your exhibitors’ and attendees’ needs, to get them to fit just right.