Attendee routing

Routing is wayfinding with an opinion. Where wayfinding answers "how do I get there," routing decides which "there" and which path — and organizers have always done it, whether or not they used the word. Putting the catering at the back of the hall, placing anchor exhibitors to pull traffic down dead aisles, sequencing keynotes to stagger lunch rushes: all routing. The digital version adds responsiveness. An app that knows a session just ended can suggest a less crowded path to the next hall; a guided tour can reorder its stops when one aisle is jammed; entrance flows can be spread across doors during peak arrival. The data for this comes from session schedules, check-ins, and — where deployed — location signals from badges or the app, which raises a real privacy obligation: be explicit about what's tracked, aggregate wherever possible, and give attendees a way to opt out without losing core functionality. The mistake to avoid is optimizing purely for flow. Routing that treats attendees as fluid to be distributed evenly across the floor serves the venue's logistics, not the attendee's day — someone rerouted away from the booth they came to see hasn't been helped. Attendee goals come first; congestion management works within them.