Event liquidity

Attendance tells you who came. Liquidity tells you whether the show worked. The distinction matters because the two can diverge badly: an event can post record footfall while exhibitors quietly conclude the buyers they needed weren't there, and that's the edition where rebooking starts to slide. Since you can't measure "found what they came for" directly, organizers use proxies: meetings per exhibitor, leads per booth, the share of visitors who connected with their target category, and — as the lagging indicator that summarizes them all — rebooking rate. Liquidity is also improved deliberately, not hoped for: vetting buyers, curating exhibitors, hosted-buyer programs that guarantee the demand side shows up, and matchmaking that raises the odds of relevant encounters inside a three-day window. Two honest notes. First, liquidity is segment-level: a show can have good overall numbers while one exhibitor category starves, and those exhibitors are next edition's churn. Second, the most common way organizers destroy liquidity is invisible in the P&L for a year — filling the floor with discounted, off-theme booths that make the visitor side less relevant for everyone who paid full price. Report match quality alongside attendance, and the incentives start fixing themselves.