Exclusive contractor
Exclusive contractor is a supplier holding sole rights to provide a specific service at a venue or show — commonly rigging, electrics, catering, cleaning, or plumbing — meaning exhibitors must buy that service from them and cannot bring their own provider, whatever their usual arrangements or preferred rates.
Exclusivity exists for defensible reasons — safety-critical trades like rigging and electrics genuinely benefit from one accountable provider who knows the building — but its commercial effect is a captive market, and everyone involved knows it. Exclusives are usually set by the venue (written into the licence agreement the organizer signs) or granted by the organizer in exchange for revenue share or sponsorship. Exhibitors meet them in the service manual as the services marked "must be ordered through," typically power, rigging, catering, and sometimes stand cleaning and internet. For organizers, the tension is direct: exclusive deals produce income and operational simplicity, but every exhibitor complaint about pricing lands on your show's reputation, and exhibitors absolutely factor service costs into re-booking decisions even when they never say so on the survey. The common mistake exhibitors make is budgeting from their home-market rates and discovering the exclusive's tariff at ordering time, blowing the booth budget on line items they assumed were commodity-priced. One honest nuance: exclusivity terms are more negotiable than the manual implies — at contract time, organizers can push for capped exhibitor tariffs or carve-outs, but almost nobody asks, and venues certainly don't offer.
Direct answer
Exclusive contractor is a supplier holding sole rights to provide a specific service at a venue or show — commonly rigging, electrics, catering, cleaning, or plumbing — meaning exhibitors must buy that service from them and cannot bring their own provider, whatever their usual arrangements or preferred rates.
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