COVID-19 Update

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, many of our clients have been enquiring as to the likely status of their upcoming exhibitions and what the future of events in the UK and abroad might look like given the new social distances in place.

While the situation is constantly changing and our industry, along with many others, remains in a state of enforced ‘limbo’ until the danger begins to subside, we have always maintained that the exhibition industry can lead the way when it comes to demonstrating how a large scale event can be run safely, and that a global industry with an impact of €167 billion will be straight back on its feet as soon as possible.

In line with this, UFI – The Global Association of the Exhibition Industry, have released their Global framework for reopening exhibitions and B2B trade events post the emergence from COVID-19. The document, in collaboration with large show organisers, ESSA and other international events and exhibition trade bodies, proactively sets out the changes the industry intends to implement to ensure exhibitions can be delivered in a controlled and safe environment.

A link to the full publication can be found at the bottom of this post, however we have picked out some of the key points below:

Overall personal and professional safety:

• Perform risk analysis on a per show basis.
• Manage use of prevention materials (e.g. provide masks, disinfectant get, disposable tissues).

Enable physical distancing:

• Introduce barriers and mark floor to indicate space regulations for all queues and public spaces (e.g. entrance halls, restaurants, catering outlets and toilets).
• Add physical transparent partition on counters (e.g. admission, registration, and customer service).
• Allow spacious distance between booths and aisles for circulation.
• Manage conference-style layout for side events to allow physical distancing.

Increase health and safety measures:

• Enable access control and conduct health screening (e.g. temperature monitoring).
• Work with guidelines dealing with/denying entry to stakeholders who fail health screening test.
• Manage cleaning, sanitation, and disinfection regimes of commonly used areas.
• Provide sanitising and handwashing stations.
• Enable no-contact policy (e.g. avoid shaking hands and consider alternative greetings, encourage contactless payments, dedicated spaces for exhibitor/visitor interaction.
• Ventilated venues/exhibition halls to have air-conditioning and air-filtering processes.
• Enable exhibitors to have enhanced cleaning and disinfection regimes for booths, exhibits and promotional materials (e.g. suggest that publicity materials be electronic).

Implement crowd control:

• Attendee flow management (e.g. monitor access routes, queueing spaces etc)
• Adapt registration process and manage set-up to reduce contact onsite.
• Manage number of attendees on the exhibition site (e.g. limit number based on area in gross square metres of the venue/hall, assign tickets to designated time slots such as days and hours).
• Manage catering offer to allow physical distancing.

Encourage and enforce measures:

• Monitor real-time crowd movements and establish processes to act accordingly.
• Managing training of epidemic prevention.

So, as an exhibitor, how does this impact your stand design and layout? We will publish a further post next week with some tips and ideas for consideration, but in the meantime our design team are on hand to start working on your upcoming projects, so just get in touch – sales@smart-dispaly.co.uk.