2025 Channel Insights
Exhibitors are getting more from events than they were before the pandemic, and the improvement has held. This report, commissioned by UFI and supported by SISO, draws on Explori's standardised exhibitor data from 3,245 B2B events between 2017 and 2025, alongside in-depth interviews with fifteen senior industry leaders from Clarion, Informa, IBM, Siemens, Cisco, Zendesk, Messe München and others.
The headline is a genuine structural shift, not a post-pandemic bounce. But underneath the improved numbers sits a warning: exhibitors are more selective, more cost-pressured, and increasingly unable to prove the value of the channel to their own leadership. As the report concludes, the industry's vibrant conditions face a new inflection point if measurement does not improve.
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What the research shows
Exhibitor NPS has shifted by 27 points, the largest movement since Explori began benchmarking in 2012.
Before 2020, most events received negative exhibitor NPS scores. Since 2022, most receive positive ones. Median NPS moved from -16.0 pre-pandemic to +11.6 post-pandemic.
The 2022 surge was not a honeymoon period.
All four core exhibitor KPIs, Satisfaction, NPS, Likelihood of Return and Importance, remain significantly above pre-pandemic baselines three years on.
Exhibitors are achieving their objectives more successfully.
Of fourteen tracked objectives, exhibitors reported improved achievement on eight post-pandemic. Only one declined. The largest gains were in meeting existing customers, launching new products, and entering new markets.
Exhibitors who prioritise existing customers get better outcomes.
Exhibitors attending with the objective of engaging existing customers score materially higher on Satisfaction (3.99 vs 3.57), NPS (28 vs -8.8) and event ROI (3.19 vs 2.97) than those who do not.
B2B festival formats outperform traditional trade shows.
Events marketed as B2B festivals deliver higher exhibitor Satisfaction (4.01 vs 3.80) and substantially higher NPS (27.9 vs 8.5) than the trade show benchmark.
The measurement gap is the industry's central risk.
Exhibitors consistently report that organiser-provided data is insufficient to prove ROI to internal stakeholders. As a premium, resource-intensive channel, exhibitions face real risk if they cannot evidence commercial value against channels that can.
Explori exhibitor benchmark data from 3,245 B2B events, 2017 to 2025, across six standardised KPIs, supplemented by fifteen qualitative interviews with senior organisers, exhibitors and agencies. Commissioned by UFI, supported by SISO.
Standardised exhibitor and visitor benchmarks going back to 2017.
Research designed around your question.
Explori runs bespoke research programmes for organisations that need to answer a specific question about their events or their market. If this kind of evidence would be useful in your business, our Managed Services team can design and run it.