Category: News

NFTs and Trade Shows

The use of NFTs or non-fungible tokens has lately exploded and is being applied already in many different sectors.

This article analyses how NFTs are already used in business events, trade shows, exhibitions, fairs and conferences.

The NFTs are:

  • unique,
  • indivisible,
  • transferable,
  • capable of proving their scarcity.

The primary use case for now of NFTs for in-person events is to use them as tickets replacing traditional tickets.

Many event planners are implementing so-called NFT tickets or NFT passes to provide participants with cutting-edge technology, which allows the ticket holder to keep a digital memory of the event while preventing fraud and reducing costs.

We recommend this read to discover how NFT ticketing works and what are the benefits: https://www.leewayhertz.com/how-nft-ticketing-works/

NFT can also be used as a unique key to access private groups or communities.

Event organizers could use this technology to build strong and engaged communities around their events, such as VIP clubs, buyers clubs, or exhibitors clubs.

This could help organizers keep participants engaged with the event community in a safe and stable digital environment.

Interesting read about the use of NFTs to build a strong community: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2022/04/26/building-a-strong-community-with-nfts/?sh=72a304f6196f

There are many more ways to use NFTs in the exhibition industry, exhibitors can for example provide their booth visitors with limited editions NFTs as the Slovenian Tourism Board did for the first time at the BIT tourism trade show in Milan in 2022 (Read more: https://www.slovenia.info/en/press-centre/news-of-the-tourism-press-agency/19216-i-feel-slovenia-nft-new-digital-card-and-use-of-blockchain-technology-for-promotion-of-tourism).

Any other ideas on how we could use NFTs in our industry?

Trade Shows and Metaverse

Metaverse is in the mouth of everyone and is expected to bring a revolution in many sectors and industries.

What about trade shows and business events? How is the metaverse going to change them?

Hard to predict at the moment, but the possibilities are endless.

We have seen a lot of technological upgrades in the last few years, especially in the ways exhibitors and buyers are matched using technological instruments such as apps and web platforms, but none of these technologies could really replace physical events. 2D platforms are great tools for events to enhance the business opportunities for physical events, but cannot replace the physical events and are costly and hard to monetize for the organizers.

The metaverse, at least hypothetically, could overcome the limits of 2D platforms and easily replace physical events, especially in some kinds of industries and for certain target groups.

Metaverse could replicate in the online world, the same pricing techniques that are used by traditional trade show organizers. Also in the metaverse companies will hypothetically be wishing to spend more to have a larger booth and a better-looking one.

As soon as the metaverse will be widely used by persons and companies to handle different daily meetings and the technology to use it will be cheap, easy to use and widely available, the metaverse might really revolution the trade show industry and it is hard to predict in which way and with which consequences for traditional physical events.

We believe that traditional events will survive, but the revolution is gonna be much stronger than the one brought by 2D platforms.

Stay tuned!

Interesting read about the topic: https://www.eventindustrynews.com/news/metaverse-what-it-means-for-tradeshows