Choosing the right venue for your event is fundamental to it’s success, choosing a wrong size venue or wrong location could be affect your attendee numbers.

Here’s some of our best practices to ensure you have chose the right venue to elevate your event.

Factors when Considering a Venue

Depending on the type of event you are planning will affect what venues may be available for you. You should consider the below factors when viewing potential venues and confirming your venue.

  • Budget – what portion of the overall event budget is due to be spent on the venue. Within the budget, consider if this can be subsidised with sponsorship. Consider the cost of the event for attendees also, if you want a free event for people to attendee, you will need a larger budget and even want to find a venue sponsor. Find out more about sponsorship for your event here.
  • Location- You want the event to be somewhere in a great location that is easily accessible and will attract your target market. Larger cities with better transport links may be better as they will be easier for visitors to attend.
  • Parking- If your event is a larger city, is a larger venue or a multiple day event, you should consider if there is enough parking for all attendees and if parking will be an additional cost for you to cover, or if it is a cost for your visitors.
  • Capacity- How many attendees do you wish to attract to your event, you don’t want to book somewhere too small but also not to book a venue that is look large that will overwhelm your attendees.
  • Services and amenities- Wi-Fi, catering facilities, cafes, are all aspects to consider when selecting a venue, as somewhere that has more facilities to offer may be more expensive to hire but will entice more visitors to your event.
  • Layout- How the venue space can be set out may affect if you book it or not, consider how you will setup the event and how the layout will affect this. Think about fire exits, toilets, where event spaces such as exhibitors and speaker sessions will be placed.
  • Insurance- some venues may not do business with you unless you have suitable insurance, speak to the venue on what specific insurance is required for your event.
  • Acoustics- if the venue sound is too low or too high your attendees may become disengaged, try and find a happy medium and see if the venue will let you do sound checks before booking.
  • Booking availability- Try and provide a couple of dates you are open to have your event, being flexible with the event date may make it more likely you get the venue you want.
  • Long-term partners- If you want to run an annual event at the same location, make sure to ask when viewing venues if you could have a long-term agreement to host your event for years to come and the perfect venue of your choosing.

How to Find a Venue

With the above factors now in mind, you will now need to find a venue which helps to execute your event goals.

Social media can be a great tool to find out where events similar to yours are being held. You could also ask your target audience for venue suggestions, this will then give you venue ideas which directly appeal to your ideal attendees.

If you are set on a city or town for location but unsure of a specific venue, you could contact the area's local visitors Bureau to inquire about venues that best suit your needs. If you are unsure of a specific location, you can check online websites such as 10times or eventful and find similar events to yours and enquire of those venues.

Questions to Ask When Booking the Venue

Before you secure your venue there are some questions you should ask prior to finalising the details.

What audio and video solutions does the venue have?

Are there any extra fees for the system you would need? Would you need to rent or buy additional audio and video equipment to help your event be a success?

What is their Wi-Fi accessibility?

Are there additional costs for this? For visitors is the Wi-Fi easy to access and free and how good is the Wi-Fi signal to run your event.

Are there exclusive suppliers?

Ensure to find out of the venue has exclusive partners, suppliers and vendors that you have to use. If they don’t, do they have any previous suppliers’ people have used that are familiar to the venue to help with setup and planning.

What is the venue’s health and safety policies?

Find out if the venue has a specific safety plan that they want you to follow as it is important that your plan matches the venue’s plan from the beginning.

Can you do a test run of event?

Ask if you can come in before the event and make sure everything works how you want. Test out the Wi-Fi, get the check-in area setup and ensure sound quality is good throughout the venue. Even if you’ve been to this venue before, keep in mind that your event setup will be different, so it is good to have a practice run to ensure everything goes smoothly.

Once You Have Secured a Venue

When you have found the right venue for your event, it’s time to plan the rest of the event! If you need help with planning, follow our 4 step event planning cycle which will help to take the pain out of planning.

Choosing the right venue for your event can be a long process but following our above best practices will ensure you have a flawless venue that will certainly wow your attendees.

 

For more helpful tips for event planning, visit ExpoBeacon Insights and news.