6 Questions You Should Ask Before Choosing Your Event Venue

Your event’s venue is paramount to a successful event. It’s an event piece that can really make or break your entire event, which is why it is important to ask yourself the following six questions before choosing your event venue.

1. Are my desired event dates open at the venue?

This may be a no-brainer but it’s a must! There’s no point in pursuing a venue if your event dates are not available. Reinventing Events recommends to clients to book the venue before announcing dates for their event. This way if the preferred venue is booked on the client’s first date preference, the client would need to consider a different venue or change the dates of the event based on availability.

 

2. Is the venue in my price range?

Every event should have a clearly outlined budget that includes a line item for the event’s venue. Typically, your venue costs should be considered first for your budget with AV and Catering being next on the list. Depending on how badly you want the venue, you may want to consider cutting back on other areas if it exceeds your estimated venue cost in the budget.

The total venue cost should include all potential fees, like event staff, security, janitorial, furniture rental, parking lot rental, house lighting/sound/broadband, permits, and insurance. The venue should provide you with an estimate of what the total costs should be for your event and you should be able to obtain this information before signing the venue agreement. If this overly exceeds the venue budget, you may want to consider other options. ‘Breaking the bank’ may have worse overall consequences than not securing your perfect venue.

 

3. Is the venue in an ideal location?

Location, location, location! Where you decide to host the event, city AND location within that city, is extremely important. Not only do you want to make sure the location is easy for your local attendees to get to, but does it also make sense for those traveling in? Is it in a city that is easy to travel too? Are the prices right for your audience for flights and hotels? This is why most companies host their larger events in bigger cities.

 

4. Is the venue realistic for my event?

Be sure to have a pretty good idea on what you want to do within your event and make sure the venue works for that. For example, if you want one main stage and four breakout stages at your event, be sure to choose your event venue that can offer space options for those stages. If there aren’t at least five rooms for those stages, can you create those rooms using pipe and drape or other materials? If so, then it may still be a good option. However, if there isn’t enough space to do this and be approved by a Fire Marshal, you may need to consider a different venue or a different format.

You don’t want to eagerly book a venue and then, in the end, have to cut event areas/ideas because they don’t work within that venue.

 

5. Is the venue easy to navigate?

Simple is sometimes better. Assume your attendees have not been in the venue prior to your event. Is it easy for them to get around to the different areas? Are you building enough time in your schedule for attendees to get from one area to the next?

It’s helpful to choose a venue attendees can easily navigate. If you are unable to find a venue like this, make sure to offer clear and consistent maps for attendees to reference. You can also consider having human directionals throughout the venue to help people find their way.

 

6. Are there exclusive event suppliers?

Exclusive vendors are simply those that the client must work with at the venue. There are some exceptions where you can pay a fee to use a non-exclusive vendor if approved by the venue. If this is this option, there are some times when the fee is too high for clients to consider.

It’s important to ask this question before signing the agreement because if there are exclusive vendors, you’ll want to research their costs and reviews before choosing your event venue and then being locked in with some vendors you may not be happy with.

 

Of course, there are a lot of other questions you will want to ask the venue but these six questions are some of the top ones to start with when doing venue research. Are you ready to book your event’s venue now?