Devon Business Show 2026 Has Its Own Interactive Exhibition Guide on Mapzest

The whole show, in your pocket

Devon Business Show 2026 now has its very own map on Mapzest

On Wednesday 14 October, more than a hundred exhibitors will fill the Plymouth Life Centre for the Devon Business Show 2026 - and this year the whole show is also on Mapzest. The hall floor plan, every exhibitor and their stand number, the live podcast sessions and the practical bits like where to park and which door to use are all in one place, on your phone. The short video shows it in action, but we wanted to write up what's in there, and why we think exhibitions are one of the best uses of Mapzest we've found.

Why exhibitions need more than a printed plan

Anyone who has walked a busy exhibition hall knows the routine. You pick up the floor plan at the door, find the stand number for the one company you came to see, cross-reference it against the exhibitor list on the back, and then try to work out which aisle you're in. By lunchtime the plan is folded in your pocket and you've walked past three stands you'd have stopped at, if only you'd known what they did.

A printed plan is a snapshot. It can't search, it can't tell you that the stand next to you is a solicitor who specialises in exactly the thing you were worried about, and it certainly can't remind you that the podcast session you wanted to catch starts in ten minutes. That gap - between the information an event has and the information a visitor can actually use on the day - is exactly what Mapzest was built to close.

Step from the street into the hall

The floor plan sits on a real map

Open the Devon Business Show map and you start where any visitor starts - outside, on a real street map of Plymouth, with the Life Centre marked and the day's details on a card at the bottom of the screen. Tap the Floor plan button beneath the marker and the map dives straight into the building, swapping the streets for the show's own hall layout. Close it again and you're back outside, exactly where you left off. It sounds like a small thing, but it means the journey to the show and the time spent inside it are part of the same experience, not two separate apps or a map and a PDF.

An interactive exhibition floor plan

Every stand, every logo, exactly where it is

Inside, every exhibitor appears as a marker on their own stand, wearing their own logo. Pinch to zoom and names appear alongside the markers, neatly arranged so they never pile on top of each other however busy the aisle. Swipe through the cards at the bottom and the plan glides to each stand in turn; tap a marker and the card jumps to that exhibitor. Looking for someone in particular? Type a few letters into 'Find an exhibitor or stand' and the plan takes you there - and because search works on stand numbers too, the number printed on someone's lanyard or business card is enough.

A proper exhibitor directory

Browse the hall by stand, or by what people do

Sometimes you don't know who you're looking for, just what you need. The exhibitor list shows the whole hall in stand order - handy for working your way down an aisle - while the category filters along the bottom of the map let you narrow the plan to Finance & Accounting, Tech & Digital, Marketing & Media, Education & Skills, Hotels, Venues & Leisure and more. Filter to one category and those stands stand out on the plan, so you can see at a glance where the people you need are.

Every exhibitor gets a page of their own

Who they are, where they are, and how to reach them afterwards

Tap through to any exhibitor and you get more than a name and a number. There's their logo, a short description of what they do, their website, and two big buttons - one that takes you straight to their stand on the floor plan, and one for directions. That last part matters more after the show than during it. The conversations you have on the day are the whole point of going, and with Mapzest every business you spoke to is still a tap away the next morning, with their contact details right there, rather than lost in a pile of leaflets.

Favourite as you go, and your itinerary builds itself

Plan your day before you arrive

Every exhibitor and every session has a heart in the corner. Tap it on the stands you want to visit and the sessions you want to catch, and they collect together in your Favourites - a personal itinerary for the day, with every stand and session a tap away. Do it on the train in the morning and you arrive with a plan; do it as you walk round and you leave with a shortlist of who to follow up with. Nobody has to fill in a form or create a schedule. It's just there, built from the things you've shown an interest in.

The line-up - live podcasts all day

Six sessions from the Podcast Area, recorded by Fresh Air Studios

Most events have a line-up of some kind, whether that's speakers, workshops, demos or bands. At the Devon Business Show it's a series of live podcasts recorded in the Podcast Area throughout the day - from the show's opening and the launch of Global Devon at 9.55am, through Community Impact, Business Resilience, Skills, Digital & AI and Green Innovation, to the Roundup of the Day at 3pm. Each session has its own page with its start and end times, what to expect and a link to follow along online, and each one lists its guests along with their stand numbers - so if a conversation catches your interest, you can walk over and carry it on in person.

A few more screens from the show

Tap any image to see it full size

Beyond the walls of the hall

An event rarely ends at the front door, and this is where having the floor plan sit inside a real map really pays off. Outside the hall, the same map can carry as many extra markers as the event needs - the free Park and Ride at Milehouse, the separate show entrance at the back of the building, the networking breakfast up the road at Home Park, nearby hotels for exhibitors staying over, and places to grab lunch or a drink once the doors close.

For an organiser, that's a chance to look after visitors from the moment they set off to the moment they head home. For local businesses, it's a chance to be in front of hundreds of people who are, for one day, right on their doorstep. And because each marker is just another Mapzest listing, it's no more work to add the café over the road than it is to add a stand in the hall.

Quick to build, easy to keep up to date

From exhibitor list to live map in a fraction of the time

Exhibitor lists change right up to the last minute - a stand moves, a late booking comes in, a logo arrives the night before. So the Devon Business Show map was built from the thing every event already has: the exhibitor list, with names and stand numbers. Exhibitors were imported in one go, placed on their stands automatically and given their own pages, logos and descriptions, ready to browse. When something changes, it's changed once and it's live for everyone straight away - no reprinting, no new PDF to circulate, and no out-of-date copies doing the rounds. The 'What's New & Updated' panel on the home screen even shows visitors what has been added or changed recently.

Any floor plan, any space

For the Devon Business Show we've used a clean, simple exhibition plan, because that's what works best for a hall full of stands. But a Mapzest floor plan can be any image at all. A hand-drawn illustrated map of a festival site, an architect's drawing of a conference centre, a stylised plan of a hotel lobby and its function rooms, a museum's gallery layout, a university campus or a visitor attraction's grounds - if you can draw it, it can become an interactive map with live markers on top.

That flexibility is the point. Mapzest doesn't ask an event or a venue to fit its idea of what a map should look like. It takes the plan you already have, in the style that already suits your brand, and brings it to life.

On a phone, or on a big touchscreen

Everything you've seen here runs in the Mapzest app on a visitor's own phone, which is how most people will use it on the day. But the very same map also runs on a large touchscreen display. At the entrance to a hall, in a hotel reception or in a conference foyer, a Mapzest Kiosk becomes a self-service information point - visitors walk up, search for an exhibitor or tap through the plan, and see exactly where to go.

When nobody is using it, the screen doesn't sit idle. It quietly cycles through the event's highlights, exhibitors and sessions to catch the eye of passers-by, and it resets itself to a fresh start after each visitor walks away. It's the same content as the app, kept up to date in the same place, just on a much bigger screen.

More about Mapzest Kiosk

Why this works so well for exhibitions and events

Pull all of that together and the benefits stack up for everyone involved. Visitors find who they came for quickly, discover people they didn't know they needed, and leave with a record of every conversation worth following up. Exhibitors get a proper presence beyond a stand number - their logo on the plan, a page of their own, and a way for visitors to find them long after the stands are packed away. Sponsors and partners get prominent space on the home screen. And organisers get a guide that's quick to build, simple to keep current and costs nothing to reprint.

There's a quieter benefit too - fewer printed plans and programmes heading for the recycling bin by mid-afternoon.

See it for yourself on Stand 94

We'll be at the Devon Business Show on Wednesday 14 October on Stand 94 - and yes, you'll find us on the floor plan. Download Mapzest before you go, have a look around the hall, favourite a few stands and sessions, and then come and say hello. We'd love to show you how it all fits together.

And if you run an exhibition, conference, trade show, festival or venue of your own and you're wondering what it might look like with your floor plan, get in touch. We can usually show you a working version of your own event far quicker than you'd expect.

Talk to us about your event