The event registration checklist includes everything from when registration opens to when you scan the attendees at the entrance. Begin preparations eight weeks in advance using your form and ticketing, send weekly reminders, test check-in a day before, and export your attendee list once the event is finished.
No one gets out of bed eager to create a registration form. Yet it’s the only aspect of an event that affects every single attendee, and it fails in silence when done in a hurry. The steps in this guide follow chronological order, from eight weeks prior to the week following your event. It will work for any kind of conference, exhibition, launch or corporate event in Dubai regardless of scale.
Eight Weeks Out: Get the Form and Tickets Right
Most registration headaches are born here, weeks before anyone shows up.
Ask Less Than You Want To
Everyone wants more data. Marketing wants job titles, catering wants allergies, someone in the CEO’s office wants to know who’s bringing a plus-one. Resist most of it. Every extra field loses you a few sign-ups, and half the answers never get looked at again.
Our rule of thumb: if nobody can name the decision an answer will change, cut the question. Name and email are non-negotiable. Company and job title earn their place at business events. Dietary needs only if there’s food. Session choices only if a room can genuinely fill up.
Keep Ticket Types Few
Three or four is plenty. General, VIP, speaker, exhibitor, and press if media are coming. Past that, people stall at the dropdown.
Decide what’s free and what’s paid, give each type its own cap, and test a real payment with a UAE card and a mobile wallet before you launch. A declined payment page loses people fast, and they rarely come back to try again.
Pick Your System Early
Choose your registration and check-in tools now, not in week six when you’re panicking. What you pick decides what lands in guests’ inboxes and what your door team holds on the day.
Four things matter: QR code check-in, offline mode, badge printing on demand, and a trained person at the venue. If you’d rather have one provider for all of it, our onsite event registration service handles registration and check-in together.
Four Weeks Out: Open the Doors
Test the Page Like a Guest
Keep the page short. Headline, date, venue, price, one big button. Then open it on your phone, because that’s where most people will register. Sign up with a spare email, read the confirmation, and scan the QR code.
Sounds obvious. It’s also the step people skip, and the one that finds the broken thing.
Invite in Waves
One big email and a prayer isn’t a plan. Send the announcement, then nudge people who opened it but didn’t sign up, then send a last call a few days before registration closes. Keep a list of who’s been invited so nobody gets the same email twice. VIPs hate that more than you’d think.
Check the Numbers Weekly
Look at sign-ups against your target every week and see where they’re coming from. Behind week four? You can still change the promotion. Behind week one? Not really.
The Last Week
This is the week for small fixes.
Go through the guest list for duplicates and typos, and check that VIPs, speakers and press are tagged correctly. Confirm what each ticket type can access, then export a backup. A misspelled name on a badge looks sloppy. On a spreadsheet it’s a ten second fix. At the desk, with forty people behind you, it’s miserable.
Then send the pre-event email. This one message does more for your queue than almost anything else. Resend the QR code with a plain instruction to show it at the door. Add the address, where to park, which entrance to use and when the desk opens. If ID is needed, say so here.
Now plan the door. Take your busiest hour and work backwards. Say 800 guests arrive in the first hour and a scan takes ten seconds. One station handles about 360 an hour, so you need three, plus a spare. We go through the full maths in our guide on how to reduce check-in queues. Decide how many stations and kiosks you’ll run, set up separate lanes for walk-ins, VIPs and everyone else, and put one named person in charge of each.
Event Day
Get there early. Before the first guest, test every scanner and printer. Scan a test code at each station, print a test badge, then switch the Wi-Fi off and scan again. That last one is the test you’ll wish you’d done.
Spend five minutes briefing the team on the three things that cause most delays: lost codes, duplicate names and spelling fixes. Everyone should know who handles VIPs, who deals with walk-ins and payments, and who to call when something breaks.
Then watch the waves. If the line goes past about ten people, open another station. Write down when the rush starts and when it ends, because that’s gold for next year. Our event check-in solution page covers how scanning, kiosks and offline mode work together on the day.
After the Event
Most teams stop at the closing speech. That’s a waste, because the data is the most useful thing you walk away with.
Export the attendance list and put registered next to attended. The gap is your no-show rate, and it’s the number you’ll use for catering and seating next time. Check when people arrived and which sessions filled up.
Thank people within 24 hours, then send a short survey. Share the headline numbers with sponsors and exhibitors, because they’ll ask. Delete or archive personal data you don’t need any more. And write down what slowed the door and what worked, while you still remember. In six months you won’t.
What to Ask on the Form
Short forms win. This is roughly how we’d split it.
| Field | Ask it? | Why |
| Full name | Always | Needed for the badge |
| Always | Sends the QR code | |
| Company | Usually | Printed on the badge |
| Job title | For B2B events | Helps exhibitors and networking |
| Phone number | Only if needed | Useful for SMS reminders |
| Dietary needs | Only if catering | Avoids last minute chaos |
| Session choice | Only if capacity is limited | Prevents overfilled rooms |
| ID number | Rarely | Only if the venue requires it |
Dubai Notes
Events here often need approvals, and what’s required depends on the event and the venue. Ask early. Timelines tend to be longer than people expect.
If you collect personal data, the UAE has a federal data protection law, Federal Decree-Law No. 45 of 2021. Tell guests why you’re asking for their details and keep them secure. Run the specifics past your legal team.
Weather matters more than it should. In summer, a queue outside is miserable, so keep lines indoors or in shade. During Ramadan, evening events bunch arrivals around iftar, so staff the desk for that window, not the printed start time.
Then there’s the venue itself. Dubai World Trade Centre is big, and guests can walk a long way from parking or the Metro before they reach you. Put signs up early and put check-in near the main entrance. Hotels around Sheikh Zayed Road, Business Bay and DIFC often have narrow lobbies, so walk the space and mark where the line will actually form. Lines don’t care about your floor plan.
One last thing: most guests expect to pay by card or mobile wallet. Cash at the door slows everything down.
Mistakes to Avoid
Asking too much is the big one. Long forms lose people before they finish.
Skipping the test is next. A QR code that won’t scan at 8:45 on event morning is a bad way to start the day, and checking takes two minutes a week earlier.
Pre-printing every badge catches people out. Walk-ins and name changes always show up, and the box of spares never covers them. Same goes for a single check-in station. It looks neat on the plan and falls over on the day.
Keep an offline copy of the guest list somewhere safe, even if you never open it. And don’t ignore the data afterward. Attendance numbers are the best argument you’ll have for next year’s budget.
Where ArrivalMe Fits
ArrivalMe takes on the parts that are hardest to run alone. We build your registration page and tickets, send the QR codes, manage your guest list and badges, run check-in with scanners and kiosks, and print badges on the spot. Afterward you get attendance reports. Our staff are at the venue, so you’re not fixing a scanner in the middle of your keynote.
You can run the desk with your own team using our app, or let ours run it for you. Talk to our team about your next event.
Final Thoughts
None of this is complicated. A few decisions early, a few tests late, and a team that knows what to do when something odd turns up. Work through it in order, keep the form short, and try everything on a real person first. Then your guests remember the event, not the queue.