You are right about banners!
We had a 4 m2 stand, the smallest they did but we did pay a little extra to have a corner stand which gave us extra exposure. The organisers provided a back wall with our name on it, a carpet and a desk. We borrowed 2 pop ups - one from the area tourist office, which they did in English for us, about the free use of local buses and trains and one from the village tourist office - those 2 virtually made the 2nd wall, dividing us from the neighbouring stand. The majority of stands were professional organisations plus there were tables for small local companies and crafts.
We deliberately went for a 'cluttered' look to give an impression of all the things available here so we took a chair and coffee table (with a glass of wine, books and DVDs on it), borrowed some skis from a local sports shop, plus sledge, tennis and badminton racquets, a few baby toys and a basket with our 'welcome pack' in it. I am not sure how well the idea worked but it did make us look different.
For the walls, we had some fantastic collages made up by Snapfish, one of the area, one of the apartments, also a map showing where we are (on the Czech border) and a map of the local ski runs, plus a few other bits and pieces. To attract attention, we took 3 bottles of local schnaps which we gave away free as tiny tastings and ran a free prize draw for 2 nights in one of our apartments - people had to fill in their contact details for our mailing list to participate. We got 41 entries which is about the number of potential guests we had good conversations with. Of course we also gave out flyers which we had had printed.
We offered 10% off bookings made at the show or by next Sunday. So far, we have no bookings from up but were pleased that we spoke to that many potential guests - probably more than we have spoken to face to face ever.
The show was for expats living in Czech Republic and we only found out about it 10 days beforehand so we had a relatively poor stand position.
So, don't know yet if it was worth it but it was huge fun planning it and we enjoyed doing it.
And a nice footnote is the email I got back yesterday from the young woman who won the prize:
"Many thanks, it is fantastic!!! Great news, I am very happy to win it, because I love the landscape and nature around your town. I know it more from the Czech part and have been planning to discover it from the German side, so I feel very lucky
.
I have very nice memories about Bayerisch Eisenstein, 20 years ago when I was a little girl, it was the first western place I ever visited in my life, I remember being very impressed:). "
And you see photos of the stand here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/25231786@N ... 037488106/