Visitor counting for fairs and festivals

Visitor counting for trade fairs from Bumbee Labs measures visits per day, flows between halls and aisles, and dwell time. Organisers and exhibitors can then see how many came and where they went. LiDAR, Wi-Fi and 3D sensors do the counting. Bumbee Labs is the company behind the only footfall method in Europe approved by a data protection authority.

The short version

• Visits per day and hall, plus unique visitors on the same day, are counted anonymously.
• Flows and dwell time per hall and aisle show where visitors go and which areas they never reach.
• Organisers and exhibitors read the figures in a dashboard, through an API or in exported reports.
• The six questions below run from how many came to which halls nobody finds, followed by ten more in a short list.

What can trade fair visitor counting tell an organiser and its exhibitors?

How many people really came to the fair, and will the figure stand up to scrutiny?

Count visits by day and hall inside the fair, using the definitions in the footfall KPIs glossary. Tickets and registrations record an entry once, at the gate; a continuous series gives organisers and exhibitors a figure they can examine. Visitor figures for funders shows how an auditable count is built.

Exhibitors are not rebooking. What report can we give them?

Show each exhibitor the flow in their aisle and zone. The dashboard has views tailored to each stakeholder, and the figures also arrive through the API or as scheduled exports and reports. Exhibitors then have numbers to base the rebooking decision on. Every metric and delivery format is listed under data deliverables.

Do people stop in the aisle, or walk past the stand?

Count the people who pass along the aisle and how long they stay in the measured stretch, then compare before and after a change of stand design or activity. LiDAR counting in the aisle gives passers-by and dwell time for that stretch, and from those two numbers the exhibitor sees whether more people stop.

How do we price stand spaces by the flow past them?

Flow per aisle and zone shows which positions carry the most traffic. Corner and entrance positions can then be priced against the rest on measured numbers, and the price defended to exhibitors. The zone data also marks hot and cold areas and anchor positions, and flow heatmaps lay them out on the hall plan.

Did the demo or the talk at the stand draw people?

Compare visits and dwell time in the aisle during the activity with the same hours in the same hall without it. The baseline-and-uplift method used to measure event impact separates what the demo added from what would have happened anyway, such as a busy afternoon in that hall.

Which halls and aisles does nobody find?

Flows and dwell time per hall and aisle show how visitors spread across the fair and mark the dead zones where they never arrive. Read dwell time next to the flows: a hall with many passers-by and short stays points to a different cause than a hall that visitors never reach.

Which other questions can a trade fair count answer?

• Did the sponsor areas deliver an audience? Counts and dwell time at each sponsor area or screen show how many people stopped there, and how DOOH audience is measured explains the measurement around screens.
• What do the queues at the entrance, registration, cloakroom and lunch look like? Queue build-up in the measured areas shows where staff and signage are needed while the fair is open, and the Crowd Alert add-on sends alerts in near real time.
• How full is the hall compared with its capacity limit? LiDAR and 3D sensors report occupancy per hall against your safe limit, and the safety organisation plans from that measured figure.
• Did this year’s layout work better than last year’s? Measuring the fair in the same way each year shows what a new hall division or entrance changed in flows and visits, and benchmarking keeps the editions comparable.
• Where do the trade fair visitors come from? Mobile network data shows where visitors come from across the region, a catchment area the city and the hotels also want to see.
• Do visitors stay all day, or leave after lunch? Dwell time for the fair and per hall shows how long visitors stay, and you can decide programme, catering and the hours exhibitors need on that basis.
• Unique visitors or visits, when the same trade visitor comes on three days? Visits per day and unique visitors on the same day are counted anonymously; counting the same person across several days requires the visitor’s opt-in.
• Do the seminar rooms fill up, and which programme items drew people? Occupancy and dwell time per seminar room, hour by hour, show which sessions drew an audience and inform next year’s programme, room sizes and placement.
• Did the trade fair stand pay off? An exhibitor can base the answer on the count in the aisle: passers-by, stops and dwell time.
• When should the sales staff be at the stand? Plan stand staffing around the peaks by hour and day on the fair floor, which show when most visitors pass.

How is visitor counting set up in a trade fair hall?

The sensors are installed during the build-up and removed with the teardown, and the count runs for the days of the fair. They cover its footprint: entrances, registration, halls, aisles, seminar rooms and sponsor areas. No personal data is produced, and the figures describe the fair, never an individual visitor.

LiDAR counts without a camera and without footage. Wi-Fi counting across the halls reads flows through the connectivity already on site. At entrances, 3D sensor counting gives exact in and out counts; the video is processed for analytics only, and no personal images are stored. For a single temporary shop, see pop-up stores.