I just went to EXPO REAL for the first time. Here are 11 things I’ll do differently in 2027.
One of my most popular LinkedIn articles is something I wrote on the train home from Leeds after UKREiiF. Thousands of people have read it - it turns out people really want to know whether these real estate conferences are actually worth going to.
So, after two very packed days at EXPO REAL in Munich, here is my version for anyone considering going in 2027. I wrote most of this while recovering from a horrible molar extraction and whatever illness I managed to pick up on the plane. If I've missed anything obvious, I'm blaming the antibiotics. Send me your well wishes.
Every major real estate conference has its own flavour and EXPO REAL has a very distinct one.
Part of that is simply because it is held in Germany. I lived in Zurich for many years and like to joke that I was raised in a German style of doing business, so some of the culture is familiar to me. But I have spent enough years working in the UK that parts of EXPO REAL still felt kind of foreign.
I will go again. But I will do some things very differently.
1. Start planning your meetings weeks before you arrive
German people love planning, and EXPO REAL is no exception. I cannot emphasise this enough. This is not a conference where you can rock up with your backpack and hope to spontaneously vibe with enough interesting people to justify the cost.
People schedule meetings, lots of them and often every 30 minutes throughout the day. That means once the conference starts, getting time with someone can be surprisingly difficult.
2. Use the app before you get there
I made a stupid assumption before EXPO REAL: I didn't think people would actually respond to unsolicited messages through the conference app. So, like an idiot, I only really started messaging interesting people on the Saturday before a conference beginning on Monday. Before that, I had mostly relied on people already in my network. It turns out people do respond.
Other senior execs were perfectly happy to accept a meeting from someone they didn't know if the approach was relevant. Next year I will be in that app weeks beforehand.
3. Check where your hotel actually is before you book it
Someone I met thought she had discovered the ultimate EXPO REAL hack by booking a hotel with “Messe” in its name. Reader, she had not.
It was nowhere near the conference and she was travelling across Munich every day. Check the map before congratulating yourself on your extremely clever hotel booking.
4. Don't overfill your diary
Messe München is enormous. I discovered this by being late for an important meeting because I had completely underestimated how long it would take me to get from one hall to another. At one point I was running through the venue in heels because I had thought my next meeting was somewhere near A1 when it was actually in B3.
It can easily take 10–15 minutes to get from one meeting to the next. Do not schedule your diary as though every stand is next door.
5. Wear flat shoes ... but dress more formally than you would for many UK property conferences
If you are a woman who normally wears heels for business events. Don't. There is simply too much walking. By the end of the day your feet will be furious with you.
So, back in March I met someone from London at MIPIM who was wearing a bright fur coat. I was delighted, I can still picture him now. EXPO REAL is much more conservative. There were a lot of blue suits. Many of the women were in suits too. I barely saw anyone who looked like the stereotypical casually dressed tech bro.
You absolutely could use that to your advantage and deliberately stand out. But if you arrive in jeans, a T-shirt and your baseball cap expecting a casual PropTech conference atmosphere, you may discover that you have misread the room.
6. Bring actual business cards
In the UK I pull out my phone, open LinkedIn and connect immediately. At EXPO REAL, I tried that a few times and occasionally got a look that essentially said:
Why would I connect with you on LinkedIn? I don't know you.
Fair enough.
7. Be prepared for a more conservative and less spontaneous networking culture
In the UK, if I hear someone interesting on a panel, I will often walk up afterwards, introduce myself, tell them what I found interesting and start a conversation. Sometimes that turns into a meeting or even a business relationship.
At EXPO REAL, several people were taken aback when I did this.
That doesn't mean don't do it. I met some interesting people precisely because I ignored the awkwardness and did it anyway. But this isn't necessarily a conference where an extrovert can simply wander around collecting new best friends. There is more formality. More gatekeeping.
8. Go if you want to meet the operational side of real estate
At one point I saw an enormous McDonald's stand and genuinely thought there was a McDonald's inside the conference. I was delighted. I thought I was getting a McFlurry.
No. It was literally the McDonald's corporate stand.
One of the things I hadn't fully appreciated before going was how operational EXPO REAL is. At EXPO REAL there were landlords, operators, service providers and occupiers everywhere. For someone like me working in customer and tenant experience, that made the conference particularly relevant.
9. Go for Germany and continental Europe, not because you want another MIPIM
At MIPIM you are constantly conscious that people have arrived from all over the world. EXPO REAL felt much more German-first. There were certainly international companies and delegations, but the centre of gravity felt overwhelmingly German.
Yes, you can navigate EXPO REAL in English. The signage works. Plenty of people speak English. The titles of all the panels are interestingly, in English. Some sessions offer AI translation. But still ... a lot of the conversations, presentations and networking happen in German, and the German market is very much at the heart of the event.
I speak fluent German (vielleicht noch nicht ganz verhandlungssicher, aber es geht) and hadn't realised before going quite how useful that would be. In preparation, I immersed myself in Deutsch by watching BoJack Horseman dubbed in German. I thought it might help get my brain ready. Although, if we met at EXPO REAL, I should point out that I am considerably less funny and cool in German. I become rather shy and serious, mostly because I'm concentrating so hard on conjugating verbs and remembering whether everything is der, die oder das...
10. Use existing networks to find your people
I went to a Ladies in Real Estate event, which gave me an immediate route into meeting people locally through a network I already knew from the UK. If an organisation you belong to has a German or European chapter, find out what they are doing around EXPO REAL. You can use those existing relationships to get to know people in a new market.
I hosted a dinner on Monday night for my network Experience Makers , which was great. I'm a little biased but it was my favourite part of the week.
At my dinner on Monday night
11. Finally, if you're exhibiting, understand the standard you're competing with
I don't think I saw a single major stand that looked as though somebody had slapped it together. Some of them were essentially temporary apartments- meeting rooms, cafés, bars, staff serving drinks, the works.
These were not cheap-looking pop-up booths with a few banners and a bowl of branded sweets. If you are thinking about exhibiting, understand the standard you are competing with before you decide what “having a stand” means.
So, will I go back?
Yes. For me, the ROI was there. I have clients in Europe who I simply wouldn't see at the major UK conferences, and the mix of occupiers, landlords and operators is unusually relevant to what I do. I also came away knowing that I could get considerably more out of it next time.
So I'll be back in 2027. Just with a much fuller diary, flatter shoes, and a significantly better understanding of where B3 is.
Did I miss you at EXPO? It's not too late to connect. For more insights like this, follow me Chenai Gondo, PhD
About the author
Chenai Gondo is the CEO of RealService, a UK-based customer experience and intelligence consultancy specialising in the real estate sector. She also leads Experience Makers , a network bringing together senior property professionals to share best practice in customer experience. She previously held senior roles at McKinsey & Company, British Land and essensys, and holds a PhD from ETH Zürich. She writes meandering essays about real estate, business, leadership and entrepreneurship, drawing on her experience across the UK and continental Europe.
About RealService
RealService is a specialist customer experience consultancy for the built environment. We work with real estate owners, developers and operators to understand and improve how their assets perform in practice. RealService maintains the RealService Customer Experience Index, an independent cross-sector CX benchmark for European real estate, built from more than 60,000 customer interviews conducted across office, retail, industrial, mixed-use and residential assets over the past 27 years. To learn more visit: https://www.real-service.com/
Topics covered in this article
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