Am I the only one who realized event floorplans need 3 foot wider aisles than the venue map shows?

I spent 4 hours at the Austin Convention Center last Friday watching attendees squeeze past each other and finally saw my mistake - I was trusting the venue's 'minimum' spacing instead of adding buffer for actual crowd flow. Has anyone else had a show layout fail because you followed the building specs too literally?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_nina16d ago

Venue maps are usually overstated on purpose so you have room to work with. Sounds like you just needed to actually walk the space before loading in.

finleyh8916d ago

Did you catch that recent article from Event Safety Alliance about the 18 inch rule? They found that every 100 attendees needs an extra 3 feet of aisle width to account for people stopping to check their phones or talk. I started adding 4 feet of buffer after reading it and it saved my last trade show layout from being a total disaster. The venue specs are just a starting point, not the final answer.

william_henderson16d ago

You're still bottlenecked by how people actually move, not by the blueprints.