Trade shows

Trade show accreditation in Argentina: exhibitors, visitors and set-up days

By SOMOS DER · October 30, 2026 · 7 min read

To accredit a trade fair you need to separate at least three audiences: visitors, exhibitors and the set-up and tear-down crews. Each one should be its own attendee type, with its own registration link, its own rules and its own sectors. Visitors usually enter once, exhibitors need re-entry all day, and set-up crews should only get in through the service entrance. This guide is for organizers and exhibitors from abroad running or joining a fair in Buenos Aires or anywhere else in Argentina.

A fair is not an event with one door

At a congress almost everyone does the same thing: they come in, go to the talks and leave. At a fair, audiences with nothing in common share the same building. The visitor arrives, walks the hall and leaves. The exhibitor arrives before everyone else, goes out for lunch, comes back, goes to the car for more brochures, comes back. And during build-up and tear-down the venue is full of people who are neither visitors nor exhibitors: stand builders, electricians, freight drivers, sound and screen technicians.

If they all carry the same kind of badge, the door cannot tell them apart. The typical result: visitors in the hall during set-up, exhibitors stuck in the general queue in the morning, or a builder who comes back on a show day with a set-up badge and walks right in. If you are flying in from abroad with a stand team, that last problem is not yours to manage, but the queue is.

Step 1: one attendee type per audience

Everything starts with the list of types. A structure that works for most fairs:

• Visitor. If the fair runs several days and you want to know how many people came each day, use one type per day. If there are time slots with limited capacity, for example school visits, each slot can be its own type.
• Trade visitor or buyer. If the fair has trade only hours or a business area, keep them apart from the general public.
• Exhibitor. The staff of each stand during show days.
• Set-up and tear-down. Builders, technicians and suppliers working before and after.
• Press, organization and staff, as at any event (see press accreditation and staff, suppliers and artists).

In PASE each type has its own registration link. Visitors get the visitor link; each exhibiting company gets the exhibitor link. Nobody picks a category: it is assigned by the link they registered through. Each person receives the QR code and the badge in PDF by email. For foreign exhibitors this matters: the registration page and the QR email are available in Spanish and English, they follow the browser language, and adding ?lang=en to the link forces English.

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency recommends the same approach in its Public Venue Credentialing Guide: out of town individuals, exhibitors among them, "should submit credentialing requests electronically via fax, email, or online portal", and those requests "should be divided into categories or groups based on functions".

Step 2: re-entry or not, type by type

This is the decision you notice most at the door. In PASE a type with re-entry does not consume the QR code: the person can leave and come back, and every pass is logged with date and time. A type without re-entry enters once and the code is used up; a second attempt shows as a duplicate.

• Exhibitors: with re-entry. They come and go all day. If their code is used up on the first pass, half an hour later you have a queue of annoyed exhibitors.
• Set-up and tear-down: with re-entry, because they go back and forth with material. But as a separate type, so their pass never counts as an exhibitor or visitor pass.
• Visitors: it depends. If you want to stop a pass being handed on, no re-entry. If the fair lets people step out and come back, re-entry, and you get the log of every pass.

Step 3: sectors and doors

Build the matrix: types in the rows, sectors in the columns. Typical sectors at a fair are the exhibition hall, the service or loading entrance, the conference room if there is a parallel program, the business area for buyers and the press room. Each check-in point checks that matrix when it scans: if a visitor tries to come in through the loading entrance, the screen says not authorized. Keep in mind that the door checks the type and the sector, not the day, so the separation between audiences has to live in the types and sectors.

A separate service door for set-up crews and exhibitors in the hours before opening solves half the problems. If the venue does not have one, at least set up a separate check-in point at the same entrance, with its own operator. Every scanned door is a check-in point: Base includes 1, Pro up to 4 and Enterprise unlimited.

Step 4: build-up and tear-down are another event

The days before and after have their own logic, so plan them as a separate event with its own door plan. The CISA guide is specific about deliveries: they "should be scheduled and approved ahead of time", "the names of drivers and other staff facilitating the delivery should be provided as well", and they should be made "to designated areas, such as loading docks".

Translated to a fair:

• Ask each exhibitor, well in advance, for its set-up crew: names, company and which days they come. Have each one register through the set-up link instead of emailing you a spreadsheet.
• Define a loading and unloading schedule by time slot and send it in writing. If you use slots with limited capacity, each loading slot can be its own type with its own link.
• Staff a check-in point at the loading entrance during the whole build-up and tear-down.
• Give the set-up type only the service entrance and the build areas, never the exhibition hall during show hours.

Build-up and tear-down are work, with tools, heights, electricity and loads. In Argentina, safety conditions at work are governed by Law 19,587 on Occupational Health and Safety and its regulations, which apply across the whole country, and by the venue's own rules. Accreditation does not replace that control. It organizes it, because you know who is inside and since what time.

Step 5: measure each audience separately

With separate types, the PASE live report shows entries by type, sector, door and hour. At a fair that helps with three things: seeing how many visitors are in the hall at each moment, knowing when exhibitors really arrive (and whether to open the service door earlier), and having real attendance per day for the closing report. That report is what you show exhibitors when you offer them the next edition, so the numbers should be real entries, not registrations. More on that in real attendance, not registrations. The reports are in Spanish, so plan for a quick translation if your board reads English only.

Two details that help at fairs: the email typo checker at registration avoids lost QR codes from a "gmial.com" or a "hotmail.con", and "Recover my pass" lets a visitor who lost the email request it again without going to the help desk.

Visitor, exhibitor and builder are not the same attendee with a different badge color. They are three different sets of rules.

Frequently asked questions