Choosing A Venue For Your Event

"Now That You Know How to Find a Venue, Learn 15 Considerations For Picking The Right Venue One of the most common questions I’m frequently asked is how to find the right venue. As with most things, striking a balance between experience, budget and emotion is a tricky business and requires a bit of a professional’s touch. (Ahem…cue the pro planners stage right.) Maybe you’re warming to the role of “event planner” or new to the hospitality industry and aren’t sure where to begin? Fear not. You can quickly ramp up your venue selection skills by following a blueprint for friends, family, clients and referrals. This three-part guide makes finding the right venue faster easier, and more rewarding. It also can’t hurt to look like the super hero who knew how to pull it off with ease, right? How do you want your guests to feel?rnWhether it’s warm and fuzzy, inspired and educated, or as if they just got home from their best night ever out on the dance floor crawling into bed at 3 a.m., you have a notion about how you want your guests to “feel.” How they feel about you, your brand and your event before, during and after the occasion. You have a concept of the words you’d like them to use to describe it. Capture that event essence for your planning benefit. A great way to start your venue selection process is to fully imagine the event in your mind. Vision boarding can be a worthwhile exercise to prevent wasting precious dollars and hours to find the right venue, decor, rentals, entertainment or other event aspects that may not be aligned. Have a solid game plan going into your hunt for the right venue. It’s perfectly acceptable to draw on inspiration from previous events, other things you’ve seen online or international events that were mucho impressive. It is not always necessary to completely reinvent the wheel at this phase. Consider the venue’s style. What style of venue are you hoping to secure? Will it be a traditional hotel conference center or expo hall, or does it need to be a private airport hanger for your high-dollar sponsors or VIPs? These details matter in helping you immediately narrow your search to find the right venue. Have this in mind. Continue to build on your event vision. Now that you have a fantasy space in your mind, think about what you want the guest registration and entry process to be like, what the guests will see and do first, and where you’d like to take them along the event timeline. Deciding on what matters most before you’ve started searching will help you really hone in on venues that can help you accomplish these goals, and still meet your budget. Event seating so easy it basically does it for yournGet Started NowrnConsider the venue’s capacity and comfort. Having a general idea about your maximum headcount is a must before you try to source venues. While we all know that you won’t have a guaranteed final headcount until a few days leading up to the event, and even that will have some margin of error, you simply must be certain you are picking out spots that will not be too small to accommodate your group comfortably, or so large that the event feels “flat” even if you have hundreds of people in the space. While the venue’s maximum headcount matters, so do specific functional spaces and and rooms. If your event requires that guests move from various aspects of the building to attend group, or breakout sessions, you will also have to be certain that a multi-use facility can fully accommodate your needs. Be certain you’ve requested both the venue’s seated and standing room only (SRO – cocktail-style) capacity. Be very explicit about this because venues will often suggest a larger guest count will fit into a space than is comfortable or reasonable. You can sometimes make this work with a small margin of error, but not with many guests. You want to make sure the space is as promised.