EXPO REAL Munich: What I Learned About Conference ROI, Real Estate and the Value of a Good Conversation
I went to EXPO REAL in Munich with a fairly simple objective: to find out what made it different.
It was one of the few major European conferences I hadn't attended before. I'd heard plenty about it, particularly its reputation as a place where asset managers, developers, property management firms, technology companies and energy businesses come together to meet and do business.
I wanted to understand what that looked like in practice. I was also curious about the mood in continental Europe, given that much of my conference experience has been in the UK and North America.
And, as always, I wanted to pay attention to the things that don't necessarily appear on the programme. What were people talking about when they weren't on stage? Where were the most useful conversations happening? And did the reality of the industry match the messages being put out publicly?
After a few days in Munich, I came away with observations about the property sector, some ideas about where the industry might be heading, and a few reminders about what it takes to get genuine value from a conference.
One of the most useful lessons was also one of the simplest: being at a conference and making a conference work for you are two very different things.
1.
The mood on the exhibition floor was a little cautious
The strongest theme I heard in conversations at EXPO REAL was uncertainty about the year ahead.
Several people from large asset management firms spoke about their concerns around high bond yields and borrowing costs, projects stalling, and the cost of development. Energy costs – particularly gas and diesel – were also making construction more difficult.
The phrase that kept coming to mind was that we were slow-motion walking into a recession.
That was my impression of the conversations I was having, rather than a prediction about what will happen next. But the level of concern was noticeable. People described capital being held back where possible, while geopolitical and political instability added another layer of uncertainty to investment decisions.
When the costs are high, the risks are difficult to assess and the outlook is unclear, committing capital becomes a much harder decision.
For me, this reinforced the value of looking beyond an industry's public messaging when attending a conference. The polished presentations, exhibition stands and marketing materials tell you something about how organisations want to be seen. Conversations with the people making decisions can tell you something different about what they're dealing with day to day.
Neither perspective tells the whole story, but listening to both can give you a more useful understanding of the market.
For organisations attending conferences to understand their customers, partners or competitors, that distinction matters. The objective isn't simply to collect information. It's to return with a clearer picture of what's happening in the industry and what that might mean for your own decisions.
2.
EXPO REAL is enormous.
Plan accordingly.
I'd been told that EXPO REAL was a major trade fair, but I hadn't fully appreciated the scale until I arrived.
The exhibition halls and buildings were enormous, with people moving between different spaces throughout the day. Some companies had elaborate stands and a few even had full sit-down restaurants. There was catering everywhere, and the larger organisations brought substantial teams.
There were blue suits everywhere, too. It was a very male environment.
The scale was impressive, but it also made the practicalities of attending more complicated. Getting from one meeting to another took time. Finding someone for an impromptu conversation wasn't always straightforward. People took their meetings seriously, and simply hoping to bump into the right person wasn't much of a strategy.
If I were advising someone attending EXPO REAL for the first time, I'd suggest doing the following before arriving:
Book meetings with priority contacts.
Identify the companies and people you genuinely want to speak to, and arrange meetings in advance.Allow enough time between appointments.
Don't assume you can walk from one end of the event to the other in a few minutes.Have a backup plan.
If you can't secure a meeting with someone, visit their stand, find out what they're working on or attend a relevant session.Check the programme carefully.
Not every session is in English, so make sure you know what language will be used before adding something to your schedule.Prepare for a long day.
Comfortable shoes and a way to charge your phone are essential!
These are straightforward details, but they're easy to overlook when you're busy organising flights, accommodation and meetings.
A conference strategy needs to account for the physical reality of the event, not just the list of people you want to meet. A perfectly reasonable schedule on paper can become unworkable when you factor in the distances, queues and time required to move around.
3.
The best conversations weren't necessarily happening in the exhibition halls
One of my favourite discoveries was a Bavarian-style beer garden between the halls, complete with grass, pretzels, beer and food stalls.
On Tuesday afternoon, I had a couple of free hours. The conference had quietened down a little, so I sat in the beer garden and found that a few people I recognised, including people I'd been hoping to speak to, passed by.
We ended up having some very good conversations.
I'd wondered how much room there would be for spontaneous encounters at an event where so many people had pre-booked meetings and the distances between buildings made casual drop-ins difficult. Sitting in the beer garden reminded me that even a highly structured conference has space for unexpected interactions.
It wasn't the only place where useful conversations happened outside the formal programme. I also managed to attend a dinner where I had some excellent discussions, and I found the side events and networking opportunities particularly valuable.
I attended my first ULI Next Gen event, which was a good introduction. Being part of a group also made the experience feel less solitary.
This is something I think organisations sometimes underestimate when planning conference attendance. The exhibition floor and formal sessions are visible, easy to schedule and often central to the event's marketing. The smaller gatherings around them can be just as valuable for building relationships.
A dinner, drinks reception or informal meeting offers a different kind of environment from a busy exhibition stand. There's more room to ask questions, explore an idea and get to know someone beyond their job title.
Of course, these opportunities don't always happen by themselves. The most useful side events still require research, invitations and a little planning.
If I were attending EXPO REAL again, I'd look more deliberately at the dinners, drinks receptions and smaller gatherings happening around the main event. I'd also consider hosting something myself, either before the conference begins or on the final evening, when people have more time to connect.
The key is to think about the whole experience, rather than treating the exhibition itself as the entire conference.
4.
I would book more meetings next time
I should say that I didn't arrive at EXPO REAL with every hour accounted for.
I was there partly on a fact-finding mission, partly to do work for clients, and partly to run an event with the Urban Land Institute. I had three meetings arranged in advance, along with a few looser plans to connect with people.
Looking back, I would have made those loose plans more concrete.
At EXPO REAL, trying to arrange a meeting on the spot was difficult. People were moving between buildings, working to tight schedules and taking their appointments seriously. I still managed to make some valuable connections, but I could see how a more deliberate approach would have made better use of my time.
This is one of the reasons I think conference planning needs to begin well before anyone gets on a plane.
For an organisation investing in flights, accommodation, tickets and several days away from the office, it's worth asking a few questions before committing to the trip:
What do we want to understand, achieve or change as a result of attending?
Who do we need to speak to in order to make that happen?
Which conversations should be arranged before we arrive?
What other events or gatherings could help us build those relationships?
How will we know whether the time and money were well spent?
The answers will differ depending on whether you're attending to develop partnerships, generate leads, understand a market, meet existing customers or explore a new opportunity.
But the principle is the same. A clear purpose makes it easier to decide how to spend your time, and a reasonable measure of success makes it easier to evaluate the investment afterwards.
That doesn't mean scheduling every minute. It means making sure the most important things have a place in the plan.
5.
Don't plan away the possibility of a lucky encounter
There's a balance to strike between preparing for a conference and leaving room for things you couldn't have predicted.
I think of it as a form of luck hacking.
A casual attendee might arrive without a particular objective, wander around the exhibition stands, watch a few demonstrations and hope to run into someone interesting.
A strategic attendee starts with a purpose and a realistic goal. They identify the people and organisations that matter, arrange important meetings and make choices about where to spend their time, but they also leave space for the unexpected.
That matters because some of the most useful opportunities are difficult to schedule. You might meet someone through a mutual contact, discover an interesting company while attending a session, or have a conversation that takes your thinking in an entirely different direction.
The point isn't to predict every outcome, it's to create the conditions in which good outcomes are more likely.
Even though I hadn't booked as many meetings as I would have liked, I still followed my usual process. I reached out to people, looked for networking receptions and found my way to a dinner where I had some great conversations.
The preparation created opportunities. Being open to what happened next allowed me to make the most of them.
For organisations, this means resisting two extremes. Don't arrive with no plan and expect the event to deliver value. Equally, don't fill the schedule so tightly that there's no time to explore, follow a promising conversation or accept an unexpected invitation.
A good conference strategy should provide direction without becoming a straitjacket.
6.
One bigger industry observation: infrastructure is eating real estate's breakfast
One of the more interesting discussions I encountered came from a session I was running with the Urban Land Institute.
The phrase that stuck with me was: infrastructure is eating real estate's breakfast.
People in the room were talking about the presence of infrastructure businesses at the conference, including utilities, roads, telecommunications and data centres, and the investment these areas were attracting.
Some of the real estate professionals I spoke with viewed this as a threat to investment in traditional real estate.
I found that perspective interesting because I think there's another way to look at it. Infrastructure and real estate are connected. Both need the other to succeed, and changes in investment priorities create questions about how businesses across these sectors work together.
I was also pleasantly surprised by the attention given to technology. Real estate can be slow to adopt new technology, but the Transformation and Beyond stage was focused on transformative technology in the sector.
These observations aren't enough to draw sweeping conclusions about where the industry is heading. They did, however, give me some useful questions to take away.
Where is investment moving? Which businesses are becoming more important to the sector? Are organisations treating adjacent industries as competitors when they could be potential partners? And what opportunities might emerge from changes that initially look like threats?
These are the kinds of questions that make conference attendance valuable beyond the immediate meetings. A useful conversation or session doesn't always produce an instant commercial opportunity. Sometimes it changes the questions you're asking when you return to work.
7.
What EXPO REAL reminded me about conference ROI
It's easy to measure conference attendance in visible terms: the number of tickets purchased, meetings held, leads collected or people who visited a stand.
Those measures can be useful, but they don't necessarily tell you whether the investment was worthwhile.
A meeting might lead to a partnership months later. A conversation might reveal a shift in the market that changes your strategy. An introduction might create a relationship that becomes valuable long after the event has finished. Equally, an organisation can spend a considerable amount attending a conference and return with very little to show for it if nobody has thought carefully about why they're going or what they need to do while they're there.
The real value comes from connecting the event to a broader business objective.
That means thinking about conferences as part of an ongoing strategy, rather than isolated dates in the calendar. Which events matter most to the organisation? Who needs to attend, and for what purpose? What relationships need to be developed over time? How will the team prepare, coordinate its activity and follow up afterwards?
These questions become especially important for organisations attending several conferences each year. Without a broader plan, it's easy to repeat the same activity, spread people too thinly or miss opportunities to build on relationships from one event to the next.
EXPO REAL reinforced something I see across the conference landscape: the return on a conference doesn't begin when the doors open, and it doesn't end when everyone flies home.
It begins with deciding why the event matters. It grows through purposeful preparation, thoughtful conversations and the ability to recognise opportunities. And it continues through the follow-up that turns those conversations into something useful.
My takeaway
I went to EXPO REAL to understand an event I hadn't experienced before and to get a better feel for the European property sector. I came away with a clearer sense of the conversations taking place, some interesting industry questions, and a few ideas about how I'd approach the event differently next time.
I'd book more meetings. I'd plan more deliberately for the side events. And I'd still leave a little room to sit in the beer garden and see who happened to walk past.
Strategic conference attendance doesn’t require you to control every moment, it's about being clear on what matters, preparing to make it happen, and staying open to what you couldn't have planned.
For organisations, the more interesting question is how to apply that thinking across an entire year of events.
Which conferences genuinely support your business priorities? How should your people prepare for them? Which relationships are you trying to build, and how will you carry those conversations forward? That's the thinking behind a 12-month conference strategy: connecting individual events to a wider plan for relationships, opportunities and business growth.
If your organisation invests significantly in conferences and events, I'd be interested to hear how you approach that investment. Do you have a strategy that connects the events you attend throughout the year, or does each conference tend to be planned on its own?
I work with organisations to develop conference strategies that connect event attendance to wider business objectives, helping teams make better decisions about where to invest their time, who they need to meet and how to turn those connections into meaningful opportunities.
If you're reviewing your conference calendar for the year ahead, get in touch with me to discuss how a more strategic approach could work for your organisation.
Note: Conference Field Notes is a collection of independent observations from the conferences I attend. These are my personal reflections and experiences, not official reviews or statements on behalf of event organisers.
