Exhibitions and roadshows
What a trade show in Singapore actually costs you
Floor space is sold by the square metre, so that is the unit everybody argues about. It is the wrong one.
What you are buying is two seconds of attention from each person who walks past your front edge. A stand can be large, expensive and completely empty.
What a visitor really gives you
Almost nothing, at first. Someone walking an aisle at a normal pace crosses a three metre frontage in about two seconds, and takes in one thing: a logo, a shape, or a person doing something worth slowing down for.
If they stop, the useful part of that conversation usually runs four to eight minutes. Past that you are holding one person while the aisle keeps moving behind them.
Which is why stands with something happening on them beat stands with more square metres. A demo on a clock, a signing, a queue waiting to meet somebody: a queue is the most persuasive thing you can put on a show floor. People join it before they know what it is for. At a football signing our team worked on, the photographs show the counter several people deep, with phones and cameras held up around it.
Plan against conversations, not cost per square metre
Cost per square metre is easy to work out and tells you nothing about whether the show worked. Conversations per day is harder and tells you almost everything.
It has three ceilings and only one binds at a time. The aisle delivers so many people past your frontage. Your people hold so many conversations properly. And the hall is alive for fewer hours than it is open. Find the lowest of the three: it is the only one worth spending on. The stand itself is another subject, covered in the guide to exhibition stand design.
Which ceiling is holding your stand down
Planning ratios, not measurements from any one show. What matters is which of the three is lowest, not the number itself.
Staffing is a shift pattern, not a headcount
Two hours on the front edge is about the limit. After that a person stops greeting and starts leaning on the counter, and a stand with four people leaning on it reads as closed. Rotate in pairs, so whoever comes off can hand over the conversation they were in the middle of.
Keep somebody uncommitted at all times. A stand goes dark the moment every person on it is already talking to someone, which is how three people have a worse day than two. Put a name against every hour, the way a run of show puts a name against every cue, or the rota becomes whoever happens to be standing there.
The hours are not equal either. The first half hour of any day belongs to registration. The last hour of the last day is dead: exhibitors start breaking down and the aisles empty, so full strength there pays people to watch a hall being dismantled. Put your strongest pair on the first two hours of day two, when serious visitors come back to the stands they short-listed.
A stand goes dark the moment everyone on it is already in a conversation. Three people can have a worse day than two.
A badge scan is a name, not a lead
The scanner is the most misleading object in the hall. It produces a number that looks like a result, and three weeks later nobody can say which of those two hundred names asked the question worth calling back about.
What makes a scan worth having is three lines typed next to it while the visitor is still in front of you: what they came for, what they are trying to solve, what happens next. Twenty seconds, and it is the first habit to collapse when a stand gets busy.
Agree the follow-up deadline before the show rather than after it. What you collect decays fast, and by the second week the visitor cannot remember which stand you were.
Decide what the show is for before you book the floor
Three questions settle most of it. How many real conversations would make this worth doing? Who is having them? What happens to a name the day after the hall closes? The graphics and the giveaway are ways of serving those answers, or ways of avoiding them.
If the answer to the first is twenty, you do not need a bigger stand. You need two people who are free at the right hours and somebody writing things down.
Where trade shows in Singapore are held
Most run at Singapore EXPO in the east, Suntec Singapore Convention & Exhibition Centre in the city centre, or the Sands Expo and Convention Centre at Marina Bay Sands. Changi Exhibition Centre hosts shows that need outdoor space, such as the Singapore Airshow. Each venue publishes its own technical manual, and the organiser's exhibitor manual sits on top of it. The venues' own event calendars are the quickest way to see what is coming in your industry.
Working back from a February to April show
Book the space as soon as the floor plan opens: the better plots go first. After that, the dates that matter most are in the organiser's exhibitor manual, the same for every stand. Copy each into one plan the day the space is confirmed, then put your own dates ahead of them.
| What it settles | Whose date | |
|---|---|---|
| Space | Where the stand sits; shell scheme or space only | Yours. Better plots go first |
| Design approval | Drawings for a space-only build | Per the manual |
| Services | Power, rigging, internet, furniture | Per the manual |
| Fascia and listing | Your name on the fascia, and the catalogue entry | Per the manual |
| Graphics | Artwork signed off, printed, ready for move-in | Yours, before move-in |
| Move-in and out | The build slot, and the hour the floor must be clear | Per the manual |
A February or March show puts these deadlines around year end and Chinese New Year, which falls on Saturday 6 and Sunday 7 February 2027, with Monday 8 February off in lieu. Count working days to each, not calendar days.
If the stand then tours malls, that is a roadshow, with the mall's licence in place of the manual.
The floor is the part we run: briefing, the shift pattern, and making sure nothing leaves the stand as a bare name. Apart from running events, RBTHOL designs and builds the spaces they happen in, from stands to signage.
Common questions
How many leads should a trade show stand get in a day?
Fewer than most exhibitors expect, and the honest answer depends on which of three ceilings binds first: how many people the aisle delivers past your frontage, how many conversations the people on the stand can hold properly, and how many hours of the day the hall is actually alive. A stand on a secondary aisle with a normal stop rate is usually working in the range of ten to twenty conversations a day that are worth writing down. Counting badge scans instead produces a much larger number that means much less.
How many staff do you need on an exhibition stand?
Enough that somebody is always free. A stand goes dark the moment everyone on it is already in a conversation, so plan for cover on the front edge rather than for a headcount, and rotate in pairs about every two hours so the person coming off can hand over what they were in the middle of. Three people who are all mid-conversation are worth less than two people where one is watching the aisle.
Is a badge scan a lead?
No. A scan is a name. What turns it into a lead is the note attached to it while the visitor is still standing in front of you: what they came for, what they are trying to solve, and what happens next. Without that, a stand comes home with two hundred names and no way of telling which twenty were worth a call.
Where are trade shows held in Singapore?
Most run at Singapore EXPO in the east, Suntec Singapore Convention & Exhibition Centre in the city centre, or the Sands Expo and Convention Centre at Marina Bay Sands. Changi Exhibition Centre hosts shows that need outdoor space, such as the Singapore Airshow. The venues' own event calendars are the quickest way to see what is coming in your industry.
How early should you plan a trade show booth in Singapore?
Book the space as soon as the floor plan opens, because the better plots go first. After that the organiser's exhibitor manual sets the deadlines: design approval for a space-only build, orders for power, rigging and furniture, the fascia name and catalogue listing, then the move-in slot. A custom build needs its design settled before the first of those.
We are on the floor for the show
Tell us which show you are on, how many days it runs and what the stand has to achieve. We will come back with a staffing pattern for those days and an itemised quote you can read.