Sitevinitech 2026: a whole trade fair, without a single download
Circli was Sitevinitech 2026's technology partner: agenda, networking, map, a booth game and exhibitor leads, with nobody downloading an app.
The event
From May 12 to 14, 2026, the Complejo Las Naves in Mendoza hosted Sitevinitech, the wine-industry technology fair that its organizer reports at around 10,000 attendees, with more than 100 exhibitors. Three days of packed halls, technical talks and walking from booth to booth.
Sitevinitech chose Circli as the technology partner for its 2026 edition. The fair's entire digital layer —agenda, networking, venue map, booth game and lead capture for exhibitors— ran on every attendee's phone, without a single app download.
How it felt
At that edition, everything started with a gesture the public already knows by heart: scanning a QR code. One code and, within seconds, the person was inside the event portal, with nothing to download. The language was detected automatically, without anyone choosing it.
From there, the whole fair fit in the palm of a hand:
- They connected with each other. Every attendee carried a personal QR card. You ran into someone interesting, scanned their code and you were instantly connected in "My Network". Networking stopped depending on remembering to ask for a contact.
- They moved around with the live map. The venue map by area and the booth search made finding an exhibitor a matter of seconds.
- They played from booth to booth. Walking the venue and scanning each booth's QR, attendees collected points and won prizes from the organizer. People crossed the entire fair chasing the next stamp, and exhibitors got that traffic.
- They always had the agenda at hand. The full professional programme, with favourites, so they never missed a talk.
For exhibitors
Every exhibitor had their own access to maintain their booth profile and capture leads without a single app: the attendee scanned the booth's QR and landed in the exhibitor's panel with their name and details, always with their consent. No paper forms and no business cards lost in a drawer.
For the organizer
A panel to watch the event live —attendees, exhibitors and leads—, follow the booth game, hand out prizes and send notices to audience segments. All in one place, for all three days.
The scale
- Around 10,000 attendees, as reported by the organizer
- More than 100 exhibitors
- 0 app downloads
- Spanish and English, the event's two languages
What a three-day fair does to a system
A fair at that scale is not a thousand-person event multiplied by ten. Some things only show up with that many people, and a three-day fair shows you all of them.
The peaks aren't where you think. Traffic doesn't spread across the day: it piles up in the fifteen minutes after each talk and in the half hour of the opening, when half the fair scans the entrance QR at once. A system that averages well can still fall over, because what matters is the worst minute, not the good hour. That's why we design for the peak, not the average.
Signal inside an exhibition hall is always bad. Thousands of phones, a metal structure and a network that saturates itself. That is the concrete reason an app would have failed there: asking someone standing at the door to download forty megabytes on that signal is asking them to give up. A light page gets through anyway, which is why we care about every kilobyte of the portal.
Exhibitors and attendees run on different clocks. Attendees use the portal in thirty-second bursts between aisles. Exhibitors keep it open for eight hours straight, standing, with one hand. They are two products under the same brand, and treating them as one shows on day one.
What we took away
- The front door is won by whoever asks for nothing. If the first step is downloading something, part of the audience is left out before it starts. With no downloads, the digital layer exists for everyone.
- The game works when it's physical. Collecting points from booth to booth kept people walking past real exhibitors for the whole event, with real traffic for those who paid for their space.
- Exhibitors need their own experience too. The attendee side isn't enough: the exhibitor panel has to be just as fast and simple, because it's used standing up, with one hand.
- Language matters. Spanish and English covered the international audience with no extra work for the organizer.
What we didn't measure, and why
A case study that only tells the good parts helps nobody decide, so it's worth saying what this one doesn't prove.
We don't publish an adoption rate for this fair. At an open fair, not everyone who walks through the door registers, and the denominator isn't an honest number. We would rather give no figure than one we can't defend. What is proven is solid: the digital layer of a fair this size can work without anyone installing anything, and exhibitors can capture leads without a form.
What came next
Sitevinitech was Circli's pilot at scale. What we learned in those three days became product in the months that followed: sign-in with email or Google, AI matchmaking, communities, the free plan and our own notification engine.
For journalists: the Sitevinitech 2026 press release sums up the case.
Running a trade fair or a conference? Discover Circli Events or see how it works for fairs and conferences.