What is the fastest way to exchange contacts at a trade show?

A QR code the visitor scans with their own camera. It takes a couple of seconds, needs no app on their side, and cannot be misheard the way a spelled-out email address can in a noisy hall.

Can Ahoyy scan the attendee badges at a trade show?

No. Badge barcodes and RFID chips are controlled by the event organiser and reading them requires a lead retrieval licence bought from the show. Ahoyy scans the printed business cards visitors hand you.

Will my trade show leads go into our CRM?

Not by themselves. Ahoyy has no CRM integration. If your process depends on leads reaching a CRM automatically, look at Popl or Blinq, both of which are built around that.

Can several people on the stand share one set of contacts?

No. Ahoyy has no shared team lead pool. Each person keeps the contacts they saved. A business account does let several staff have their own cards under the same company page.

Does scanning work when the exhibition wifi is unusable?

Yes for reading the card, because text recognition runs on your phone. Opening someone else’s card page needs a connection, so save your own QR code as an image before the show as a backup.

Do I still need to print business cards for a trade show?

You can go without. A printed QR code on the stand and one on your phone covers the same ground and does not run out on day two. You will still be given paper by visitors, so keep the scanner handy.

Do the contacts I collect go into my personal phone contacts?

No. They stay in Ahoyy. Three days of a busy stand does not turn into three hundred new names in your personal address book.

a.Ahoyy

Events

Eight hours on your feet, and every hour ends with a card in your hand

Trade show contact swapping is a different sport to conference networking. On a stand you are doing the same thirty-second exchange with a stranger every few minutes, from doors open until the hall empties. Volume is the whole problem. By the third day your card box is empty, your pockets are full of other people’s cards, and nobody can tell which ones matter.

Ahoyy is free and handles both directions of that exchange: a QR code that gets your details out fast, and card scanning that gets theirs in. What it does not do is badge scanning or CRM routing, and this page is upfront about that before you spend an afternoon on it.

Create my card free Compare with Popl

A phone showing a QR code for a digital business card, ready to be scanned at a stand

Read this before anything else

If your booth is measured on qualified leads and those leads have to be in a CRM before the team flies home, Ahoyy is not your tool. We would rather lose the click here than waste your day.

Badge scanning	Not in Ahoyy. Badge barcodes and RFID chips belong to the event organiser and need their lead retrieval licence.
CRM sync	Not in Ahoyy. Nothing you save reaches Salesforce, HubSpot or Dynamics on its own.
Lead capture mode	Not in Ahoyy. No qualifying questions, no hot or cold rating, no lead score.
Team lead dashboard	Not in Ahoyy. There is no shared pool and no report on who collected what.
NFC hardware	Not sold by us at all. Your QR code is free and works on any camera phone.
What we do instead	A free card with a QR code, on-device scanning of paper cards, and a record of where in the hall you met each person.

The exchange, both directions

Getting your details out is the easy half. Your card is a web page. You show the QR code on your phone or tape a printed one to the stand, and the visitor points their normal camera at it. Your name, role, company and number open in their browser. They install nothing, sign up for nothing, and can save you to their phone in one tap.

Getting their details in is the half that people underestimate. Trade show visitors carry paper, far more than conference crowds do. Scan the card with your phone and the name, number and company save without you typing a word. Text recognition runs on the device, which matters in an exhibition hall where mobile data goes to die.

A digital business card page open in a phone browser with call and save contact buttons

The thing your card box never told you

Every contact you save in Ahoyy records where you were standing. On a show floor that is unusually useful, because a big hall is really a map of intent.

Someone you met at your own stand walked over on purpose. Someone you met at the catering area was on a break. Someone you met at a partner’s stand at the far end of Hall 3 was looking for something else and got talking. Those are three different conversations, and a week later the only thing that tells them apart is the place.

You can also add a note on the person, so the reason they mattered survives the flight home.

Contacts saved at an exhibition shown as pins on a map of the venue area

A stand routine for a busy day

1. Print your QR code once and stick it somewhere at eye height on the stand. It works while your hands are full.
2. Keep the QR screen in your phone as well, for conversations that happen in the aisle.
3. Scan every paper card at the moment it is handed over, not at the end of the day. Ten seconds each, and you avoid a pile you cannot untangle.
4. Add one word of note to the ones worth chasing. Budget, timing, the product they asked about.
5. At the close of each day, go through the new contacts while the hall layout is still in your head.

For a company stand, the page behind the card

Your card can point at a free business page rather than just a personal profile. That page carries your services with prices, photos and a location, so a visitor who scans your code at four in the afternoon sees a real answer to what you sell rather than a name and a logo.

Enquiries sent from that page land in one inbox on the web dashboard, which is the closest thing we have to a lead view. To be clear about what it is: it collects messages that people chose to send you. It is not a lead capture system and it does not tell you who visited your stand.

The Ahoyy web dashboard showing incoming enquiries and the service list for a business

Common questions

What is the fastest way to exchange contacts at a trade show?: A QR code the visitor scans with their own camera. It takes a couple of seconds, needs no app on their side, and cannot be misheard the way a spelled-out email address can in a noisy hall.
Can Ahoyy scan the attendee badges at a trade show?: No. Badge barcodes and RFID chips are controlled by the event organiser and reading them requires a lead retrieval licence bought from the show. Ahoyy scans the printed business cards visitors hand you.
Will my trade show leads go into our CRM?: Not by themselves. Ahoyy has no CRM integration. If your process depends on leads reaching a CRM automatically, look at Popl or Blinq, both of which are built around that.
Can several people on the stand share one set of contacts?: No. Ahoyy has no shared team lead pool. Each person keeps the contacts they saved. A business account does let several staff have their own cards under the same company page.
Does scanning work when the exhibition wifi is unusable?: Yes for reading the card, because text recognition runs on your phone. Opening someone else’s card page needs a connection, so save your own QR code as an image before the show as a backup.
Do I still need to print business cards for a trade show?: You can go without. A printed QR code on the stand and one on your phone covers the same ground and does not run out on day two. You will still be given paper by visitors, so keep the scanner handy.
Do the contacts I collect go into my personal phone contacts?: No. They stay in Ahoyy. Three days of a busy stand does not turn into three hundred new names in your personal address book.

Set your card up before the show

Free, nothing to print, and it never runs out on day two.

Create my card free