There are a lot of ways European and US exhibitions differ from each other. We can sit across and discuss these things at length which include starting from designing to defining some terms and language constraints. However, there is one aspect wherein European exhibitions have an edge over US exhibitions, and that is the budget factor. In US exhibitions, there is cost raising factors that make exhibitor’s budget sky-rocketed. These factors do not exist in European trade shows; thebudget cuts down a lot making Exhibiting in Europe a better option. Let us discuss these two factors now:

1. Drayage: Before you hype out and think what Drayage even means, we would request you to read our article: Exhibition Glossary which features some of the basic terms that you must know as an exhibitor. So, drayage is the charge levied on the movement of show materials from shipping dock to the booth for a show set up and back to dock for return shipment at the end of the show. This is one common practice that takes place in US trade shows and the charges applied on the drayage is very high. The cost applied is by the weight of the shipments and only organizer officials are allowed to move the drayage from the dock to the booth. You can consider cutting down on the drayage bill by requesting your exhibit design house to construct the trade show booth with light weight materials and hollow aluminum. But as an exhibitor, drayage cost is always something that will be a sore figure to your eyes.

So here is where European trade show comes into the picture. In Europe, there is no cost of drayage and the exhibit design house is only responsible for carrying the shipment from the production house directly to the booth. This becomes a very cost effective factor in comparison to European trade shows by cutting down on budget costs and making exhibiting in Europe a better preference over US exhibiting.

2. Labor: The US exhibition organizers have too many rules and regulations that they put on the exhibitor. When it comes down to hiring labor from operational tasks at the US trade shows, the labor is always hired from the union. Having said that, the union labor has a minimum wage policy which sums up to almost 100$/ hour. If the labor runs I&D work for 8 hours (minimum work hour requirement), the budget shoots up high again. This makes the exhibitor cringe again as he has to pay so much extra money making exhibitions in the US a very cost intensive affair.

Whereas comparing the same scenario in the European arena; in Europe, the labor can be self-hired by you or your exhibit design house. The design house then takes care of the labor. In Europe as well there are minimum wages. However, the amount is significantly lower in comparison to US labor charges. This also becomes one of the most effective cost cutting factors in Europe for exhibitors.

For example, BoothConstructions.com has a production unit in Poland where the labor is comparatively cheap. So we can send across our labors to the exhibiting location and ask them to work from there. We have personally seen a lot of budget saving in this case and happier clients!