How to read a trade show floor plan: halls, booth numbers and stand sizes

Large venues split the show into halls, levels or colour-coded zones, often with a separate plan per hall. Find the overview map first: it shows how the halls connect, where the entrances are and which product sectors sit where.

Booth (stand) numbers usually combine the hall with a code for the stand's position. Formats vary by organiser:

• Hall, aisle letter and number, e.g. 3-B22 or Hall 3 B22
• Plain numbers, e.g. 1245, where the first digits are the aisle, common in North America
• Grid references, e.g. A05 or C10, on single-hall shows

The same stand code can exist in several halls, so B22 on its own isn't an address. Keep the hall with every booth number, in your notes and in your spreadsheet.

Stands are drawn to scale and often labelled with their dimensions (3×3, 6×4) or area (9 m², 24 m²; square feet in North America). The open sides tell you the type: one open side is an inline stand, two a corner, three a peninsula and four an island.

Bigger stands with more open sides usually mean bigger budgets, which matters if you sell to exhibitors.

Many shows now publish an interactive plan on ExpoFP, Map Your Show, a2z, ExpoCAD or a similar platform. Click a stand to see the exhibitor's profile, or search by company. They're usually the most up-to-date version, but you can't download them as a list.

For prospecting or planning you need the plan as rows: company, booth, hall and size. Copying by hand is slow and error-prone. ExhibitionBase reads PDF and image plans with AI and reads interactive plans from their link, then gives you a list to review and export to Excel.

• Upload the PDF or paste the interactive plan's link
• Review the flagged rows
• Save the exhibitors to the show and export to CSV