Organising an art fair involves a lot. Before guests for the opening night stroll past the works of art with a glass of bubbly in their hands, the organisers have already completed a precision operation. Everything must be put on the right track: construction, ticketing and registration, sponsorship, press, catering and, of course, most importantly, the exhibitors who, with their offerings, put on a show that people will talk about for a long time to come.

If all this is not already challenging enough, as an art fair organiser you also have to deal with a conclusive registration of all these different target groups, which together determine whether you can later look back on a successful art event. How do you keep an overview of all these target groups moving through the exhibition space now and later? How do you ensure that their presence is facilitated and registered efficiently and conclusively?

Proper registration of all these audiences seems a time-consuming and labour-intensive process, but fortunately, smart software can nowadays take tasks like ticketing, registration and monitoring largely out of your hands. And perform them more efficiently and accurately than humans can, moreover. Such software allows your visitors, for example, to easily register in advance and ensures that they do not have to queue unnecessarily on the exhibition day itself.  

With the additional components for e.g. press accreditation and RSVP administration, you have everything under control when it comes to visitor registration. The software ideally allows you to provide customised applications for each target group, as each target group has its own challenges in terms of registration.

Take your exhibitors and their guests, for example. Exhibitors are the backbone of any art fair. They provide income from stand sales and their offerings determine whether the fair attracts enough visitors, generates press coverage and is authoritative enough for potential sponsors to attach their names to it.  

So it is important to support your exhibitors well in as many ways as possible so that they have the maximum positive trade fair experience. If they don't, you won't see them again next year. Make sure the information supply to your exhibitors runs like clockwork by informing them timely and accurately about the processes and planning in the run-up to and during the trade show. Also facilitate their stand construction, which in most cases they will do with their own stand builder. Moreover, ensure razor-sharp security of the exhibits, as for many exhibitors this is priority number one.

What makes the route to satisfied exhibitors somewhat easier is that they have the same commercial goal as the fair organiser itself, namely: to attract enough high-quality visitors to sell art to. To achieve this common goal, it makes sense for each exhibitor to invite as many of their own relations as possible. After all, they have already proven themselves to be interested in (investing in) art and are therefore most inclined to dip into their pockets during the fair.

However, some challenges do present themselves when inviting exhibitors' business associates, because although exhibitors are only too happy to fill the invite list with their own sales market, they are often reluctant to hand over their business associates' details to another party. Moreover, they will be reluctant to pay for no-shows later on.   

Therefore, invest in a registration system where the exhibitor only has to pay for those invitees who actually show up. Also help exhibitors invite their business associates, by using a user-friendly registration system where the exhibitor can easily upload the details of their invitees. By ensuring that this system operates fully AGV-proof and thus respects and secures the privacy of invitees, you also remove the first objection for your exhibitors.