During my 16 years in the events industry I have watched trade shows transform from a simplistic booth and attendee model into the more holistic events that many have become today. My experience over that period has given me insight into techniques and technologies that facilities can utilize to make their venues the low-cost/high-experience solutions that event organizers are seeking. One of the best new tools available for increasing non-booth and non-dues revenues is Radio Frequency Identification (RFID).
For those not familiar with it, RFID is a method of identifying unique items using radio waves. In general, a reader device communicates with a tag, which holds digital information in a microchip. There are also chipless forms of RFID tags that use material to reflect a portion of the radio waves beamed at them, as well as Wi-Fi wireless-network-based tracking technology.
This reliable track-and-trace technology can reduce costs at major facilities in areas such as equipment inventory, as well as for show-based applications like scanless identification and lead-retrieval name badges. Here are some topics that facility managers and event organizers should be thinking about when using RFID to add value and reduce long-term costs.
Equipment Tracking. Imagine knowing where every piece of audiovisual equipment in a facility is located, and being notified if someone's to try to take a piece of equipment out of the building. Would you like to know where all of the forklifts are located and whether they are being used? How about if a truck is leaving the loading dock with a forgotten exhibit booth still inside? As you can see, this type of real-time inventory and location technology could be very valuable for a facility and an event planner.
Placing tags on every crate and pallet that are unloaded for an event could greatly improve move-in and move-out efficiency and virtually eliminate misplaced crates, as well as making the entire process paperless. This would certainly reduce customer service and billing problems.
Traffic Management. The really creative applications for RFID and related technologies come into play on the event organizer side. Obviously, using RFID tags in identification badges would allow events to control access entry, and track who is on the show floor, attending seminars, luncheons, and so on. I know from my years of working closely with show organizers that there will be no shortage of creative uses for the technology, such as speeding entry, taking attendance ,and studying traffic flow throughout events. For example, if an attendee has purchased a ticket to the keynote luncheon, it will be encoded into his badge and he can walk through the entrance without any need for a ticket-taker. Anyone who walks through the entrance without the "ticket" will be flagged, and can be sold a ticket or turned away. The food servers will also have an extremely accurate head count, so there are not too many or too few meals served.
Measuring ROI. Imagine being able to provide an exhibitor with detailed statistics like, "You had 14,098 unique buyers and 35,598 total buyers pass by your booth during show hours." Such a detailed traffic flow analysis would allow booth space to be priced according to actual traffic flow, perhaps even adjusted post-show. Passive lead capture would be a big hit with exhibitors and could even be used to randomly select contest winners.
Feasibility. The old adage about having to spend money to make money (or in this case save) certainly holds true in the implementation of a facility-wide RFID solution. But with retail behemoths like Wal-Mart and Target mandating the use of RFID tags by most of their suppliers, as well as similar requirements by the U.S. Department of Defense, costs of implementation should fall rapidly. Also, the rapidly growing list of high-tech companies developing hardware and software specialized for RFID, such as Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, and Sun Microsystems, is an indication of why analysts predict that RFID will be a multibillion-dollar market within the next few years.
RFID is going to become a core technology for the future that can add to the success of your facility and its hosted events by adding real value for your vendors, event organizers, exhibitors, and attendees, while simultaneously increasing the security, inventory control, loss prevention, and overall efficiency of facilities and events.
Charles W. Allen is the founder of American Exhibition Services, an exhibition marketing firm. He is a consultant and speaker and writes often on effective event marketing solutions. He can be reached at cwallen@charternet, or at (205) 980-8408.