Airlines compete for attention at travel and tourism trade shows in a heavily saturated environment. Standard stand conversations, flyer stacks and prize-draw boxes deliver little usable data and barely any emotional brand connection. Etihad's primary problem was not reach but data quality: how do you move from a vague stand encounter to a structured CRM record that marketing automation can work with?

The requirements for the system were specific. It had to move stand visitors to interact voluntarily — without staff having to approach them. It had to deliver a strong emotional component in line with Etihad's premium positioning. And it had to maximise the willingness to share GDPR-compliant data, without resorting to crude prize-draw mechanics.

The take-home component was an additional anchor: stand visitors should leave with something tangible — not a generic flyer, but a personalised touchpoint that carries the brand forward after the visit.

Lead time four weeks: one week for background production (destination staging in close coordination with the Etihad marketing team), one week for UI configuration in the Etihad CI, one week for the hardware wrap and GDPR sign-off including newsletter opt-in copy, one week for CRM API configuration and end-to-end testing of the lead pipeline.

Set-up at the stand by an UpReach technician, with greenscreen lighting calibrated to the stand's light conditions. Briefing of the Etihad stand staff: operating the printer, handling standard situations, escalation path for technical questions.

During the show: remote monitoring via the cloud dashboard. Sessions, lead conversion, chosen destinations and average interaction time visible in real time for the marketing team. Printer status and paper supply were monitored without the stand staff having to check manually. CRM data was passed over in real time — marketing automation started for each lead within seconds of consent.