The organiser’s floor plan usually arrives with a price per square metre and a handful of free plots. Some are marked with one open side, some with two, a few with three or four. It looks like a small line on a booking form, but it decides how visitors reach you, what you can build and how much of the budget goes on walls nobody sees.
We have built all four types, from small inline stands to a 280 m² island for TTI group at the Tehran transport fair. Here is how we talk the choice through with clients before they sign the space contract.
What the four types mean
- Inline (one open side): neighbours on both sides and a wall at the back. Visitors only see your front.
- Corner (two open sides): the end of a row, open to two aisles.
- Peninsula (three open sides): the end of a block, with one neighbour behind you.
- Island (four open sides): a free-standing plot with aisles all round.
Some organisers charge the same rate for every plot. Many add a surcharge for each extra open side. Look at the price list before you fall for a corner, because the same 24 m² can cost noticeably more there.
Inline: cheap to build, hard to stand out
An inline stand is the most economical to build. The back and side walls either exist already or are simple panels, so most of the budget can go into the front: the graphic people read from the aisle, the counter and the lighting.
The weak point is traffic. Someone walking past sees you for a few seconds, and only if they are on your side of the aisle. So the front has to work hard. On inline stands we usually keep the front open, put the main message high enough to read over people’s heads and avoid a counter that blocks the whole width.
For a first fair, a small team or a product people already come looking for by name, inline is often the sensible choice.
Corner: the best value for most companies
If the budget allows one upgrade, we usually suggest a corner before extra square metres. Two open sides mean you catch visitors from two directions, and people turning a corner slow down anyway.
A corner also gives you a natural layout. One side can hold the product display, the other the meeting table. The Wadi Steel stand at METAFO was a 110 m² two-storey corner stand, and the corner position was a big part of why the upper floor could be seen from two aisles.
The trade-off is two finished façades. You pay for better finishing on the second side, and you lose some wall space for graphics and shelving.
Peninsula: good for demos and bigger teams
With three open sides, the stand starts to feel like a place rather than a booth. It suits companies that run demonstrations, bring machinery or expect several meetings at once.
The one closed side is usually where storage, a small kitchen and the back office go, so plan that wall early. If it is shared with the stand behind you, the organiser’s technical manual will set a height limit and often a rule about how the back of your wall must look from their side. These rules differ between venues in Tehran, İstanbul and Dubai, and sometimes between halls at the same venue, so read the manual for your fair before the design is fixed.
Island: freedom, visibility and a lot more design
An island gives you the most visibility and the most freedom. You can build higher within the organiser’s limits, hang a banner from the ceiling if the hall allows it and create separate zones. Holding Bartar’s 210 m² island at Iran Health and TTI’s 280 m² island in Tehran both used that freedom to keep product areas apart from quiet meeting space.
But an island has no back wall. Storage, cabling, a meeting room and a kitchen all have to fit inside the footprint, and every side has to look finished. Design takes longer, organisers often want drawings earlier for approval, and you need more staff because visitors can walk in from anywhere.
In our experience an island below roughly 50 to 60 m² rarely pays off. At that size the internal walls eat so much floor that the open, generous feel you are paying for disappears.
How we help clients decide
- Start with the goal. If you want lots of conversations with walk-in visitors, open sides matter more than area. If you mostly meet buyers who booked in advance, a well-planned inline or corner stand is enough.
- Count the people. Two staff can run an inline or corner stand. A peninsula or island needs more hands at busy hours.
- Compare total cost, not rent. An extra open side changes the build cost as well as the space fee.
- Study the hall plan. A corner next to a main entrance can beat an island at the back of the hall.
If you already have the floor plan, mark the plots you are considering and send it to us. We will tell you what each one means for design and budget. Upcoming dates are in our fair calendar, past stands are in our projects, and our services page shows what else we build.