I was talking about BYOD and the attachment for the audio visual portion of a slide show, and it made me think of "BYOB" or "Bring Your Own Beer."  In the trade show and convention industry a corkage fee represents the fee paid to the facility where your event is held, for the money that they lose by not being able to sell their own goods. In other words, if you have a sponsor that is providing free beer to your attendees, you must pay a fee for each beer given out "free" to the event facility.  They would normally be able to sell that concession to your attendees and because you are giving away something for nothing that they would make money on, you must compensate them.

This can get pretty ridiculous in my opinion as you get a large number of giveaways.  If you have an event that has a number of exhibitors giving away bottled water or refreshments or samples of their products, you can have a very large corkage bill that is paid to the event facility. 

This is not just limited to drinks given away or bottled water, but free samples of food and snacks as well. If you wanted to give a cookie to each of your visitors at the booth you are working, you would have to pay a percentage of the value of that cookie to the facility.  Yes, the house must get their "cut".  I can certainly see both sides of this issue and it may be a controversial payment to the facility, but when you are stopped from bringing doughnuts to your speakers in the speaker ready room because you have not paid your corkage it can get a little crazy.  Be sure you check to see if a corkage fee is charged before you decide to have a cool giveaway.

Tags: corkage fee, BYOB, conventions, trade shows, giveaways, promotional products, free samples