Smart Canton Fair integrates internet to serve exhibitions

Since 2015, China Foreign Trade Centre has put forward the "Smart Canton Fair" action plan to add a new competitive edge to the Canton Fair in the internet era.  

The plan aims to fully realize offline and online integration of the Canton Fair's various businesses, and comprehensively enhance the level of its exhibition and service quality.

At present, the WiFi service at the Canton Fair Complex is of an internationally advanced level in terms of user access and bandwidth capacity.

The wireless network in the pavilion can meet the internet demand of 100,000 people at any one time.

After the acceleration of its content delivery network and the implementation of overseas network line services, the number of visits by foreign merchants to the official website of the Canton Fair has doubled, with the website loading speed increased by 40 percent, organizers said.

The construction of the Smart Canton Fair is keeping pace with the needs of customers.  

In 2014, it began to use network technology to achieve global remote video investment, and realized the simultaneous centralized promotion of the global market, which greatly improved the effectiveness of overseas investment promotion and marketing at the Canton Fair.

Since 2016, the fair has offered online services such as previews and merchants' spotlights, and completed a revamp of its official website, the Canton Fair app and WeChat account.

At the 125th Canton Fair in 2019, the number of inquiries for the fair's online preview platform reached 6.95 million, and the number of products uploaded by exhibitors reached 174,600.

Since its launch, a total of 9,159 exhibitors have used this function to understand the buyer interest in the enterprises and their products.

After the revamp, the Canton Fair's official website achieved an average of 19.87 million page views per year, an increase of 24.2 percent compared with before.

The cumulative downloads of the Canton Fair app have reached 280,000, and the fair's WeChat service account has attracted 180,000 followers.

The Canton Fair has successively launched programs such as the Canton Fair's telephone barrier reporting, green special decoration award selection, and Canton Fair's transaction filling and reporting.   

The Smart Canton Fair will allow exhibitors and buyers to fully enjoy an omni-channel and one-stop service deeply integrating online and offline.

Before the exhibition, exhibitors can apply for booths online via an integrated business system, upload products in advance, apply for various services online, track the progress of all processing, and complete the exhibition setup more quickly and efficiently.

Buyers can get information about exhibitors through the pre-exhibition platform, online search and collection of products of interest.

At present, the construction of the Smart Canton Fair has achieved marked results, further improving the intelligence level of the Canton Fair and laying a good foundation for improving participation and procurement efficiency, improving customer experience, and achieving online and offline integration and system-wide interconnection.