Exclusive Feature: Most of us (hoteliers and restaurateurs) have at least once participated in a fair or exhibition with a stand representing our company.

However, the usual talks about attracting more clients with the company stand and generating profit from the fair remain just words in most cases.

Many companies don’t get the basics of the fair business and its key purpose – transform visitors into leads.

That is why we decided to shortly describe what it takes to participate in a fair and to attract more visitors with not just an interesting brochure but a potential development of future contracts.

And for that reason, we would like to propose the following top five tips for fair business:

1. Make your stand attractive but not overwhelming. Good stand is a stand that is not simply beautiful but informative. Use those brochures and spiders that focus on what you are offering.

Make sure that your goods and services are clearly described in words to the people who pass by. If you offer a number of services, make sure that you mention all of them, because you might miss some very important visitors. Always keep in mind that not the stand itself but the information that is presented on it attracts the visitors to your stand.

2. Give contacts cards to everyone interested. The contact card and not the interesting flyer should be your primary focus when distributing materials on the stand.

Visitors are definitely attracted by your beautiful brochure, but in the end their decision made based on this brochure would require a telephone number and a contact person. That is why never forget to give your contact card to every visitor of your stand.

3. Know your visitors. Try to record the information about your visitors: quantity of people, the age of people, what services are they interested in. Make sure you list even those questions they normally ask you.

This information is very important; it helps you address the role that your stand is playing at the fair. It also helps drawing conclusions about the key messages that your stand is sending to the visitors. Listen to your visitors and get to know who they are.

4. List the leads carefully. Make sure you create a table or MS Excel file for the leads. All interested visitors have to be listed, and their contact information is to be filled in in the form. This is the key result of the fair: a full list of interested clients with their contact details and the comments on what exactly falls in their category of interest.

Make sure you record everything that needs to be remembered about the person. Even such tiny details as the fact that the person should only be contacted by email or after 5 pm are important for your future reference.

5. Don’t be tempted to leave early and arrive late. The fair business is not fair sometimes. Even the most ‘empty’ times may seem tempting for you to ignore being present on the stand.

However, these are the times when the people who are most likely to arrive for the contract, not general interest will come. So make sure that at least one person stands there for meeting these people and transforming them into leads.

These key ideas of how the word at the fair or exhibition looks like will help you maintain consistency of quality service and at the same time generate as many leads as possible.

Remember, the fair business is not about distributing your printed cool brochures, but about looking what’s on the market, what interests your visitors and transforming them into your future clients.

This is an exclusive feature, reprints of this article in any shape or form without prior written approval from 4Hoteliers.com is not permitted.

Mila Petruk is a hospitality consultant and a founder of Milina Outsourcing Management (MOM) which provides consulting to hotels and restaurants including mystery guest audit, temporary staffing and training support. Being a hospitality industry enthusiast, Mila has a global insight into the developing trends of hotel and restaurant business all over the world.

Having a rich international hotel work experience and an MBA from one of the reputed Swiss hotel schools, she has applied it in almost every hotel department she had worked. Contact Mila at mila.petruk@gmail.com.