[galago]

There seems to be a big horrible cycle here. I attended VMWorld last year in San Francisco and was shocked by how many booths were staffed by attractive women who where just hired as like, temps or something. They were aggressively friendly and seemed to have the single task of getting my contact information as a sales lead. Their knowledge of the products was generally no deeper than what was printed on the promotional fliers. I probably did tend to ignore women after a few interactions. So, I'm the kind of person you're complaining about, yet I don't like the situation either. Perhaps "booth babes" are part of a successful sales strategy and I'm an outlier. However, its possible that trade show sleaze is just a pattern propelled forward by inertia. Either way, we should speak out against it.

It did occur to me that a correcting mechanism for trade shows would be a gender balance in attendees. Maybe you're working different type of trade shows, but that was my recent experience.

[Thirdegree]

'Perhaps "booth babes" are part of a successful sales strategy and I'm an outlier.'

Not according to Spencer Chen.

http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/13/booth-babes-dont-convert/

[Pherdnut]

Can't we all just agree to blame it on the sales guys?

[driverdan]

The correcting mechanism is banning booth babes.