You are faced with many decisions when organising an event and choosing a venue to hire is one of the most important ones. The event date, catering services, your guests’ experience are all affected by your choice of venue.
To help with this and to make choosing a venue less daunting, here are some tips and tricks about what to consider, how to approach it.
When to Start Looking
As early as you can. Once have a good idea of what to look for and take into account budget, estimated event size and space requirements, you can really start searching for the right venue.
Booking a venue with at least four to six months preparation time is the best way, as this will allow you to give yourself enough time to plan the other essential things, such as catering and event brochures.
What to Consider
1. Capacity and Minimums
Capacity
First of all, you will need to know the capacity of the venue for a number of reasons. For example, an event wouldn’t be able to fit 500 people if the venue’s maximum capacity is 250. They need to abide by the venue’s fire and safety codes.
Food and Beverages
If the venue you have chosen provides food and beverages, make sure you find out the minimum food and beverages spending amount (also known as F&B minimum) and ensure that the minimum is in line with previous events held there. If you estimate that the costs may be more than the minimum, it indicates that you will be a good customer to the venue. This opens up the possibility to negotiate adding in some extras like Wi-Fi in return for when your spending reaches a certain level.
Attendee Feedback
One of the most important things to do is make a definitive decision on the amount of people attending so that you can make sure the size of the room will accommodate.
2. Location
For a local event, you may be looking for a venue that’s within a reasonable distance for most of the attendees’ places of work and homes.
You should also take into consideration that many attendees will be travelling from out of town, so a venue that is near hotels, a train station and even an airport will be beneficial. Traffic, transportation and parking are all options you should think about as well.
Reducing the chance of your guests being late is essential, so providing them with an invite with the location, time and all the essentials is a good way to keep them informed and is standard practice these days. Your invite should include:
- Full location address and GPS map location
- Driving directions
- Parking/shuttle information
3. Parking
Does the venue have parking or valet parking? A venue which has available parking helps visitors out a lot, and for the people that aren’t drinking alcohol and taxi services, it’s crucial to making the night go as smoothly as possible. However, there are alternatives if the venue doesn’t have parking:
You can either reserve a nearby parking lot for your guests to use and include the cost of the parking in the ticket price or have the guests pay when they park.
Take a look at taxi services, such as Uber that offer discounts for events. You can usually negotiate with them to see if they can provide a group discount, but local taxi companies are more inclined to do this.
At the end of the day, there are many options when it comes to parking at a venue, so don’t let that deter you from hiring that perfect venue.
4. Accessibility
Accessibility means that everyone can access and use the building and its amenities, especially those with special requirements. You will need to know who your attendees are and what their needs are before you can answer this question.
You will also need to know if children will be at your location (prams and buggies), but you may not know whether people with other special requirements will be there. In this situation, you may have a feeling of this by reviewing recent events that they have hosted.
5. Flexibility
Flexibility on the date of the event can be a helpful way to negotiate with venues. You may have open dates on your calendar, which you would like to fill. You are more likely to get discounted prices by offering two or three date options.
6. Acoustics
The acoustics or the way sound travels around the room of a party venue can change the whole mood and setting of the night, and there’s nothing worse than poor acoustics to dampen the atmostphere. A low ceiling makes a room look cosy, but when it’s full, it will be noisy. Instead, a larger location would increase the reverberation.
How to Search for a Venue
It can take some time to find the right location for your party. Luckily, there are some ways to save you time:
- Contact the local convention and visitor’s office in the area to find out where your requirements are best served.
- Look at local event listing websites, find similar local events close to yours and see where they host events.
- Remember, Google is your best friend. Search for things, such as ‘party venue hire’ in your local area.
You can see that when choosing the venue for your event, there is a lot to consider. However, when you do your research, you will find the perfect place for your event if you take the above factors into consideration.
How Can Honesberie Events Help?
Finding the perfect party venue is one of your biggest milestones and determines your date, your location and the implications of many of your other party planning decisions. Here at Honesberie Events, we can not only host your party, but we can also offer our very own catering as well as an array of different services.
If you are interested in coming to look at our beautiful venue or you are interested in any of our other services please don’t hesitate to ask via filling out our contact form, or giving us a call on 01327 262 922.