Guide
The exhibition stand costs everyone forgets to budget for
Updated
The builder's quote is the visible part of the iceberg. The rest arrives from the organiser, the venue and your own logistics, and it is the part that turns a signed-off budget into an awkward conversation.
Charges that come from the organiser or the venue
- Electrics: the supply itself, the connection, and often a mandatory test and inspection. Ordered from the organiser's appointed contractor, not from your stand builder.
- Rigging: anything hung from the roof, banners, lighting rigs, signage, is normally the venue's or organiser's appointed rigger only, at their rates.
- Stand cleaning: a per-show, per-day charge that people assume is included in the space and rarely is.
- Wifi and hard-wired internet: venue-supplied, priced per connection and per bandwidth, and considerably more than an office line.
- Water, waste and compressed air: if you are demonstrating anything that needs them.
- Contractor passes, vehicle access and forklift or handling charges during build-up and breakdown.
- Waste removal at breakdown, including anything you leave behind.
- Organiser-mandated contractor fees: some shows require you to use an appointed contractor for certain trades, or charge a fee if you bring your own.
Charges that come from your own side
- Furniture hire, with delivery, collection and damage waiver as separate lines.
- AV hire: screens, brackets, media players, sound, and a technician if anything is live.
- Graphics reprints after a late artwork change, which is the most common avoidable cost of the whole exercise.
- Transport both ways, plus on-site handling from the loading bay to your pitch.
- Storage between shows for an owned stand: an annual cost, not a one-off.
- Out-of-hours labour, because venue build schedules push work into evenings and weekends.
- Staff costs: travel, hotels, subsistence, and the working days of the people on the stand.
- Give-aways, print and lead capture, which are marketing costs but land in the same budget line.
How to stop them being a surprise
- Download the organiser's exhibitor manual the week you book the space, and list every orderable service with its deadline. Early-order discounts are usually real.
- Ask your builder, in writing, which of the items above they are ordering on your behalf and which they are not. The word to avoid is assumed.
- Budget a contingency for artwork changes and one reprint, because the brief always moves.
- Ask for the quote to be itemised against the ten cost drivers, so a cheaper quote is genuinely cheaper rather than less complete.
Build-up and breakdown are live work environments with vehicles, working at height and temporary structures. The HSE publishes guidance for the events industry covering build-up, breakdown and temporary demountable structures (HSE event safety), which is worth a read before you send your own staff into a hall during build.