An Event Organizer's Guide to Implementing Pointr Blue Dot Navigation

Having worked with events including CES, Davos, NRF, and many more, we know how crucial it is to give attendees reliable experiences they’ll love from the moment they enter the venue. One vital part of creating that magic is making it easy for people to discover what your event venue has to offer, where each Point of Interest (POI) is, and how to get where they want to go as quickly as possible while also serving your sponsors, exhibitors, and organization.

That’s where personalized indoor navigation solutions come in! This article explains your options for modern indoor mapping and wayfinding and provides an overview of implementing Pointr for your event. Although this guide focuses on Pointr’s solutions and services—this is our blog after all, and we want you to choose us—it can be helpful for working with other providers, too. You’re welcome.

What are my options?

If you’re new to the world of indoor navigation beyond PDFs, static maps on venue kiosks, and signs and arrows on ceilings and floors, this is probably your first question. When choosing a mapping solution for your event, there are three major factors to consider:

• The level of detail and precision you want to offer attendees

• The features you want to offer exhibitors and sponsors

• Your budget for a mapping solution

Naturally, the more features you offer, the more you’ll spend on the mapping solution. However, more features often mean more return on investment (ROI), which offsets the cost of more advanced solutions.

(Curious as to why you should be considering maps for your event in the first place? Check out this blog post on event mapping and navigation!)

Now, let’s examine the three most common implementations.

Maps only

The quickest and easiest solution to implement is a simple interactive map. This requires little to no developer time and is relatively easy to set up. With a solution like Pointr Express®, you don’t even need an event app. Attendees can simply scan a QR code, click a URL, or tap an NFC tag to open and explore your venue map and find their way around with ease. You can also use Pointr Express® on kiosks at your venue, which may require little to no hardware setup if the venue already has touchscreen displays installed.

Maps with blue dot navigation

Blue dot navigation uses beacons throughout your venue to pinpoint attendee devices within three meters using Bluetooth and/or WiFi signals. Combined with smartphone features like barometric sensors and compasses, attendees get an experience very similar to Google Maps navigation, including turn-by-turn instructions, live predicted arrival time, and intelligent rerouting.

Since it requires beacon devices, adding blue dot navigation is more expensive than the maps-only solution and involves more setup time.

Maps with blue dot navigation and analytics

Delighting attendees with always-ready information and effortless navigation around your event is awesome. Delighting event sponsors and exhibitors with clear data insights into attendee interactions is even better. Connecting your indoor mapping and navigation experience directly to ROI is an incredible hook to keep event sponsors coming back to your events year after year.

Spending the time to find a good mapping solution that provides robust, useful analytics is the key. Gleaning analytics from the right event mapping solution generally takes little to no setup, so implementation time and cost differences are minimal.

Do it all with Pointr

"Pointr is the world's most advanced indoor mapping solution, setting the gold standard for mapping and wayfinding at events." -Jeff Sinclair, CEO/CO-Founder, Eventbase

At Pointr, we’ve created a comprehensive, end-to-end indoor mapping solution that’s easy to implement, highly-accurate, feature-rich, and reliable. With multiple patented technologies, Pointr is the only indoor location provider that offers scalable maps and blue dot wayfinding reliably for events. We’re also able to do so while leveraging existing Bluetooth and WiFi devices as location beacons, meaning less installation time and more cost savings.

With decades of experience in the event space, our team knows the massive amount of work that goes into producing world-class events. Your assigned Pointr Technical Account Manager (AM) will expertly guide you through every step, helping you coordinate with the Pointr team, your team members, venue personnel, and our installation contractors—all while taking as little of your precious time as possible.

Ready to move past static PDF maps for your events? Keep reading to learn how.

What are my first steps?

Congratulations! You’ve decided to give attendees the cutting-edge event navigation experience they need and deserve. Now what?

First, your assigned Technical PM will meet with you to discuss requirements gathering, project planning, implementation, and deployment support on the Pointr side. To kick everything off, you’ll need to make some decisions about how you’re implementing your mapping solution.

Event app or app-less?

One of the first decisions you need to make is whether to give attendees the full blue dot navigation experience with an event app integration, or go app-less with static mapping and wayfinding.

As we mentioned before, going app-less requires a lot less setup time and effort, but you miss out on the convenience of turn-by-turn navigation and precise location. If you want to integrate with an event app, there are some more questions to consider.

Should I build my own event app or use an event app provider?

You want to give attendees the best experience they can have and provide your organization with maximum ROI at the same time. When deciding whether to build your own event app or use an event app provider, weigh the pros and cons to make the best decision for you.

What features are important to you? For example, do you want networking features like Tinder-style swiping, connections, open roaming, and attendee messaging? Every feature and function added means a richer attendee experience, but it also means more time and money investment needed.

How much time and resources can you dedicate to the event app? Having your organization or a 3rd-party create an app from scratch is a massive task and can be very costly. An out-of-the-box app solution drastically reduces developer involvement and overhead from hosting and support. Some event app providers, such as Eventbase, already have Pointr integrations ready to go, even further reducing setup time and cost. However, not all providers will have all the features you want.

How long does the process take?

We know you have about seven million things to do to get your event ready for attendees, and mapping is only one part. Once you’ve decided on a path for your event app, understanding how much time it will take to set up your mapping solution is crucial for planning and coordinating with your team and your venue.

Depending on your chosen maps implementation, whether you’re building your own event app or using an event app provider, whether your event app provider already has a Pointr integration, and whether the venue already has kiosk and beacon hardware, it could take mere days or several months. 

Whatever your situation, your Technical PM will guide you through each step, connect your team with people and resources, and act as an expert advisor for all your questions to make everything as efficient and effortless as possible.

Who has to be involved with map setup?

Throughout the process of implementing Pointr for your event, we’ll collaborate with a variety of people within your organization, 3rd-party contractors, and event venue personnel. These might include project and product managers for app integrations, on-site coordinators for venue access and hardware installation, and marketing professionals who are promoting your mapping capabilities.

We’ll guide you through everything with a step by step process and timeline so you and your team know exactly what to do and when to do it.

How does Pointr build my venue map?

Almost all major event venues maintain a Computer-Aided Design (CAD) file with continually updated, detailed information about the venue’s physical layout. This complex file includes everything from room and hallway layouts to structural supports, windows, furniture, plants, fire extinguishers, light fixtures, and much more. If your venue doesn’t have a CAD file on-hand, we’ll work with them to generate one.

Since attendees don’t need to know where all the light fixtures, plants, and maintenance corridors are located, the CAD file needs to be edited to show only the details attendees need. That might sound complicated, but it’s not! Our amazing AI-powered MapScale® engine processes the CAD file and converts the floorplan into a Pointr map in mere minutes.

How do I add Point of Interest (POI) information to the map?

One of the most important roles your event map serves is to give attendees information about everything your event has to offer. The CAD file from the venue typically won’t have all the fine details of your event, such as specific exhibitor names, descriptions, and locations. As you gather this information from your event’s stakeholders, our team adds all of the data to your map for you!

You’ll probably use an event planning and management service like RainFocus to collect and compile information about your event’s sessions, speakers, sponsors, exhibitors, and more. Whatever platform you use to collect information, we’ll pull all relevant data into Pointr with API calls, keeping everything up to date as changes happen. No API? We’ll upload data files into our system, producing great results no matter what.

How long does adding POI information take?

Adding POI data is an iterative process that involves working with the CAD file until a few weeks before your event. At that point, nearly all POI and event data has been added to the map, and our team does a final upload. From that point on, all additions or adjustments to POIs and other map data happen in Pointr Cloud, our intuitive map management interface.

Your Technical PM will train your team on how to use Pointr Cloud so you can update POI and map information when needed. Check out this Pointr Cloud demo to experience just how easy and intuitive it can be.

How much detail can a POI have?

When an attendee taps on a POI in a Pointr map, expandable information about the POI appears at the bottom of their phone screen or on the left side of a kiosk screen. This information can be simple with only a title and a brief description, or it can be incredibly rich with a logo, ratings, hours of operation, an image carousel, custom tags, links to documents and websites, and custom Call-to-Action (CTA) buttons.

Is it hard to make adjustments to maps?

Last-minute changes to booth locations, names, descriptions, and more are a natural part of producing an event. As showtime approaches, we’ll collaborate with your team to conduct content reviews for spelling, grammar, accuracy, and consistency. The intuitive Pointr Cloud interface makes changes easy.

How accurate is Pointr blue dot and how is it tested?

It can take mere seconds for a person to decide whether or not they like your mapping solution, so getting it right the first time is crucial to keep people using it. However, achieving precise blue dot accuracy indoors isn’t easy for a variety of reasons.

• Traditional GPS systems don’t work indoors, so a specialized indoor system is needed

• Transitions from one floor to another often take too long. Other indoor mapping and location providers often struggle when attendees change floors

• Indoor/outdoor transitions can be clunky. Other map providers struggle to seamlessly transition from indoor location to outdoor GPS or from outdoor to indoor

Pointr has solved all of these challenges. At CES 2025, attendees rated maps—provided by Pointr—as the most useful feature in the mobile app this year. With over 7 billion square feet of space mapped at over 5,000 venues worldwide, events like Davos, NRF, and many more trust Pointr to consistently provide an exceptional mapping and wayfinding experience. This includes:

• Instant blue-dot with no waiting and no user calibration needed

• 1-3 meter accuracy on average

• Fast, accurate multi-level detection

• Smooth indoor/outdoor GPS transitions

• Smart re-routing

After we install any needed beacons, we conduct careful on-site testing and create a comprehensive Deployment Report to ensure maximum coverage and accuracy. During your event, our on-site hardware team tests every day to ensure consistent performance, both before attendees arrive, and after the crowds start rolling in.

My venue has underground levels. Will Pointr still work?

Pointr’s static and blue-dot functionality is designed to operate at full capacity without the need for an internet connection, even with thousands of attendees. With our expert hardware installation and extensive testing we create a world-class, consistent user experience regardless of the strength of cellular and Wi-Fi signals or the number of people using the map.

How much maintenance does Pointr need during the event?

Pointr is a highly scalable solution, and the hardware requires no maintenance during your event. We provide at least one on-site technician at your event to offer software support and make any necessary updates to the map so you and your team can focus on everything else.

What kinds of analytics does Pointr provide?

“Huh, that’s neat” isn’t what analytics are for. Useful, insightful analytics are vital to proving ROI for your organization and for your sponsors and exhibitors.

Pointr’s location analytics reports provide real-time and historical dashboards that give you actionable location data including what attendees searched for, which booths they visited, how long they stayed, what routes they used, and more. During CES 2025, over half a million unique sessions were recorded on Pointr maps, with attendees accessing the maps an average of 8 times during the event!

No matter how many attendees your event has, our data filters help you make sense of the chaos with date, time, location, and user type filters. Want to export the data and import it into your own analytics tools? Exporting in CSV and PDF formats or via Pointr’s API is easy!

All this sounds great... How much does it cost?

Short answer: probably less than you think! We aren’t in the business of selling beacon equipment, so we only charge a small hardware deployment fee. We also charge a license fee that will vary depending on factors like venue size and complexity, app development time, venue access, and more.

For a free, personalized discussion about your event mapping use case, get in touch with our team today!