Booth sell-through

Sell-through is the number a show director should be able to quote from memory at any point in the cycle. As a snapshot it tells you where you stand; as a curve over time it tells you where you'll land — most established shows follow a repeatable booking pattern, so comparing this year's curve against last year's at the same week-out flags trouble months before it becomes unfixable. It's also the trigger metric for pricing and sales decisions: rate steps in a dynamic model, when to release held inventory, when to push a rebooking campaign, when the sales team needs reinforcement. Measure it in square meters, not booth count — fifty small booths and five islands can be the same revenue, and a unit count hides which segment is lagging. Split it by zone too, since 85% overall can mask a premium hall that's full and a secondary hall that's dying. The honest nuance: 100% sell-through isn't automatically the goal. Selling out a year early usually means prices were too low, and a small buffer of held space lets you accommodate late high-value exhibitors. The common mistake is inflating the figure by quietly shrinking "sellable" area — reclassifying dead zones as features — which makes the metric useless for year-over-year comparison.