LONDON, U.K. — Nineteen Group’s Safety & Security Event Series is billed as Europe’s largest exhibition dedicated to the safety and security of people, places and assets.
These co-located shows take place at NEC Birmingham and include:
- The Security Event
- The Health & Safety Event
- The Fire Safety Event
- The Workplace Event
- National Cyber Security Show
- Pro Integration Future Europe
For the past few years, Nineteen Group has focused on helping the series’ exhibitors achieve stronger outcomes, investing in a structured meeting program to connect visitors and suppliers.
However, attendees were not turning up consistently.
Exhibitors set time aside and had sales teams waiting, but there was no reliable way to know whether the right buyers would appear.
In 2026, Nineteen Group deployed Ezna, an AI event concierge from Grow This Event (GTE), across 55,000 registered visitors at the shows.
Trade Show Executive (TSE) examined how this tool benefited the series, and what it means for the future of event tech.
“Nineteen has a genuinely innovative team that was willing to try something completely new and completely different with us,” Meera Somji, Co-Founder at GTE, explained. “Rachel Wong, Nathan Stovell and Tristan Norman were enthusiastic about delivering the best possible show for their visitors and exhibitors, and they were open to doing something that had never been done at this scale before. They knew that they already attract active buyers to the Safety & Security Event Series, and they believed that if they could truly connect buyers with the right exhibitors, it could be transformative.”
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Buyer-Led Personalization
Visitors engaged with Ezna in their own words on their mobile devices or laptops, sharing their interests and buying intent, and the platform matched them with the most relevant exhibitors from the series’ 1,300-strong exhibitor roster.
Bookings went directly into attendees’ work calendars, and the tool provided SMS reminders, stand details and floor-plan navigation before the meeting, followed by SMS afterwards.
Somji explained that this personalization helped turn recommendations into action: Ezna booked more than 1,000 meetings, with an 80% attendance rate.
More than 2,300 visitors signed in, visitor satisfaction reached 91% and the program generated around five times more meetings than the series had ever had.
The shows also achieved record rebooking performance, including a 98% rebook rate for The Fire Safety Event.
“For attendees, the magic is answering a couple of quick questions and then discovering a new, interesting potential supplier that they have never heard of before,” Andrew Carney, Co-Founder at GTE, added. “For exhibitors, the feedback was that it felt like ‘magic’. There was almost no onboarding. They didn’t have to reach out to buyers cold. The buyers came to them. And they had enough information about the buyer to make the most of that conversation. For the organizer, we think event technology has to earn its place. It should clearly improve a metric the business cares about, usually revenue, registrations, retention or a combination of those.
“In this case, the results gave Nineteen Group’s sales team new evidence to use in exhibitor conversations and helped support a 40% increase in the price of the associated marketing package, representing several hundred thousand pounds in additional commercial value.”
Looking Ahead
Somji shared that one of the clearest lessons from this deployment was the importance of working closely with an organizer throughout a campaign.
GTE provided meeting numbers and details with the wider Nineteen team every day, listened to requests as they emerged and used feedback from visitors and exhibitors to keep improving the experience.
The organization also saw how important it is to begin visitor engagement early. Somji noted that there is a significant opportunity to use even more personalized pre-event communications and help exhibitors understand the platform earlier, so they are ready to make the most of incoming buyer interest.
“Trade shows bring thousands of people together, but scale alone does not guarantee value,” Somji said. “The real opportunity is to combine that scale with the thought and curation traditionally reserved for smaller VIP programs. If we can help every visitor feel that their objectives matter — and help every exhibitor meet more of the right buyers — we can make events considerably more valuable for everyone involved. For me, the most exciting proof is hearing an exhibitor say that one connection could materially affect the future of their business.”
The Future of Event Technology
Carney does not believe that the future of event technology will just involve giving attendees more tools to use.
“People’s expectations of software are changing. Increasingly, they expect to be able to say what they want and have the technology do more of the work for them,” Carney said. “Events have traditionally asked attendees to do a huge amount of that work themselves. They research hundreds of exhibitors, build their own agenda, decide who to meet and then try to fit everything into one or two days. I think AI changes what an event can do for them.
“Instead of giving someone 1,300 exhibitors and asking them to work out what is relevant, we can ask what they are trying to achieve and help them get there. The same principle applies to exhibitors and organizers. Understand the goal first, use the technology to help deliver it, and then prove the outcome.
“For me, that is the real opportunity for AI in events. Make the experience simpler, help people make better decisions and make the value of the event much easier to measure.”
To learn more about this implementation, click here.
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