Your Booth at the Falcons Exhibition Is a 10-Day Branch. Run It Like One

Your Booth at the Falcons Exhibition Is a 10-Day Branch. Run It Like One

The International Saudi Falcons and Hunting Exhibition opened today, Thursday 1 October 2026, at the Riyadh Exhibition and Convention Center in Malham, north of Riyadh. It runs until 10 October, from 2 pm to 11 pm every day. Organised by the National Center for Falcons, this year's edition targets more than 1,440 exhibitors and brands. The 2025 edition drew more than 700,000 visitors over ten days, with more than 1,400 exhibitors and brands from 47 countries, and its sales exceeded SAR 91 million, according to Ajel.

Behind those numbers are small and mid-sized businesses: a camping supplies shop, an expedition vehicle outfitter, a falconry gear seller, each opening a booth that trades for 90 hours across ten days. The stand design and the stock usually get careful attention. The systems are often left to the last minute, and the same picture appears: a separate cash box, goods that left the warehouse with no document, visitor cards in a bag, and a verdict on the whole effort based on impressions. A booth is really a temporary branch, and this article is about treating it as one in your systems.

The booth is its own stock location, not a table off the books

The first decision is a simple one: set the booth up in your system as a separate location or warehouse, exactly as you would a branch. Everything after that becomes traceable:

• Move stock to the booth with a document. Goods going from the warehouse to Malham travel on a stock transfer with quantities, rather than being loaded into a car and found short two weeks later.
• Prices and discounts come from the system. The exhibition price or show offer is set up as a promotion with a start and end date, not left to a salesperson's memory or a sheet on the counter.
• A daily close at 11 pm. A quick count of booth items against their system balance, and cash and card takings matched to the day's sales. Each day starts from a known number, so if a gap appears you know which day it came from.
• A reverse transfer on the last day. Whatever is left returns to the warehouse on a document, and the gap between what went out, what sold and what came back shows up at once, not in the month-end count.

A booth invoice is the same as a store invoice

A sale at the exhibition is a full sale. If your business is resident in Saudi Arabia and registered for VAT, the simplified tax invoice at the booth is generated electronically by a compliant e-invoicing solution, carries a QR code, and goes to the buyer as soon as it is issued, printed, or electronically if both parties agree. That is what the detailed e-invoicing guidelines from the Zakat, Tax and Customs Authority (ZATCA) require.

If your business has already entered the integration phase, two details matter for the booth in particular:

• Onboard a new device before opening. The FATOORA portal is where your invoice-generation unit is onboarded with ZATCA through a cryptographic stamp identifier, and where onboarded solutions and devices are listed. A new or borrowed point-of-sale device for the booth needs to be onboarded and tested before the first customer, not after. How onboarding works depends on your system, so ask your provider exactly how it is done.
• The hall network at peak hour. Your e-invoicing solution generates and stamps the simplified invoice, which is then reported to the FATOORA platform within 24 hours of issue. That window means sales need not stop if the connection weakens, provided your solution can issue and stamp invoices offline and report them automatically once the network returns. Not every solution can, so test it by cutting the network on purpose before opening. If an invoice cannot be reported within 24 hours, the guidelines ask you to notify ZATCA through the dedicated form on its website.

A return after the exhibition does not cancel the booth invoice. It generates a credit note linked to it, as we explained in our article on returns after a promotion season.

The visitor who did not buy today is the most valuable thing the booth takes home

At a ten-day public exhibition, many visitors ask, compare and move on. An outfitter does not sell a full vehicle build over the counter, and a visitor at a tent stand asks about size and price, then goes home to decide. Those people are what is left of the booth once it is taken down, provided they are recorded in a way you can act on:

• A short form behind a QR code on the stand or on a tablet in the salesperson's hand: name, mobile number, and the product they asked about. Three fields filled in under a minute are worth more than a card that carries only a number.
• A specific interest, not a broad category. Record exactly what they asked about, on which day, and which salesperson spoke to them. The follow-up will be built on that line.
• An explicit consent box. Article 25 of the Personal Data Protection Law does not allow a business to use a person's personal contact details to send advertising material without the recipient's consent, and it obliges the sender to provide a clear way to opt out. A mobile number written on paper without consent is not a marketing list.

Follow-up starts on day eleven

A list that is not followed up within days of the show goes cold fast, because the visitor saw dozens of other stands. So the follow-up plan gets written before opening, not after:

• A message per interest. Whoever asked about a vehicle build receives a quote for what they asked about, and whoever asked about a tent receives its sizes and price, rather than one generic message for everyone.
• Know the messaging cost in advance. If you follow up through the WhatsApp Business Platform, Meta started charging for service messages today, after a monthly free allowance per number, as we covered in our article on WhatsApp reply pricing. Cost the follow-up campaign before you launch it.
• Replies go into the system. A customer's reply reaches a named salesperson and is logged against the customer, instead of disappearing into the phone of a temporary hire whose contract ended with the show.

What to measure before deciding whether to return next year

If the booth is run as a branch, these numbers come out of the system with no extra effort:

• Sales by day and by hour. The exhibition opens nine hours a day, and the point of sale tells you which hours sold and which were browsing only, so you can staff the real peak for the remaining days.
• Items that moved and items that came back. That decides what you bring to the next show and what stays in the warehouse.
• How many consenting leads you collected, and how many bought within one or two months of the show, provided the system links the booth visitor to their later invoice.
• The full cost of the booth, including space, design, wages and transport, against the margin on booth sales and on the later sales linked to it.

Without these numbers, the decision to come back next year rests on how crowded the stand looked, and a crowded stand does not necessarily mean sales.

The Origami view

We are a Saudi technology company that builds business systems and apps, and we often see exhibitions run as a marketing expense outside the systems: a separate cash box, an Excel file pieced together after the event, and cards nobody follows up. The General Authority for Exhibitions and Conventions describes October to May each year as the exhibitions and conferences season, so a business that exhibits more than once a year sets the booth up as a branch once, then reuses the same template at every show.

None of this means buying a new system. A seller of camping supplies or vehicle outfitting usually already has a point of sale in the shop, and the real work is extending that system to the booth: a stock location, an onboarded device, a price list and a visitor form with consent. That setup happens before opening, and it is much harder to fix halfway through the show.

Conclusion: a booth setup checklist

• Set the booth up as its own location, move stock in on a transfer document, and bring the remainder back on a reverse one.
• Onboard the booth's point-of-sale device to your e-invoicing solution before opening, and test how it behaves with no network.
• Enter exhibition prices and offers in the system with a start and end date.
• Prepare a three-field visitor form with an explicit consent box.
• Close every day at 11 pm with a quick count and a cash and card reconciliation.
• Write the follow-up plan by interest, and start it in the week after 10 October.

Sources

• Saudi Press Agency: Falcons and Hunting Exhibition 2026, more than 1,440 exhibitors and brands (Arabic)
• Saudi Press Agency: military shows at the International Saudi Falcons and Hunting Exhibition 2026, with dates and visiting hours (Arabic)
• Saudi Press Agency: more than 700,000 visitors to the 2025 exhibition over 10 days (Arabic)
• Ajel: the exhibition's 2025 sales exceeded SAR 91 million (Arabic)
• ZATCA: Detailed Guidelines for E-Invoicing, Version 2 (May 2023)
• SDAIA: Personal Data Protection Law, Article 25
• Saudi Press Agency: the General Authority for Exhibitions and Conventions on the October to May exhibitions season (Arabic)