When you are organising an event, you will have to make many different decisions. Choosing a venue is just one of those decisions but it is a decision that will have the most impact on the success of your event. The date of your event, the catering options you can offer, and the experience your attendees have - all of these are affected by the venue you choose. Does this sound a little intimidating? Don't worry because the team at Conferences UK are here to help with your venue search UK. Here are some things you need to keep in mind:

When to start searching

The earlier you start your search the better. You need to have a good understanding of your budget, estimated event size and space requirements in order to be able to do this. If you book your venue four to six months in advance, you will be able to have more time to plan other critical things such as catering, event marketing and website.

What to take into consideration

Location

You have probably already considered this as soon as you were tasked with planning the event. If it is a local event you should be looking for a conference centre within a reasonable distance from attendees' homes or places of work. If the majority of your attendees will be coming from out of town then you should look for a venue which is near good transport links and has hotels nearby as well.

If you want to reduce the possibility of your attendees being late then provide them with a mobile event (pretty standard these days). If they have GPS, driving directions and parking instructions at their fingertips your attendees will feel much more positive about the whole event.

Parking

Does your venue have a parking lot? If it does then all the better. If it doesn't then you need to find somewhere nearby for your attendees to park. You could:

- Reserve a local parking lot and include the cost for this in your ticket price

- Look at local taxi companies and see if they can offer your attendees discounts

Capacity and Minimums

It is important to know the room capacity your venue offers for a variety of reasons. Firstly, if you have 500 people coming to your event, they won't be able to fit into a room with a capacity of 250. Also, your venue will have health and safety codes to adhere to as well.

If your venue offers catering, they may also have food and beverage minimum spending amounts as well. You should try and negotiate things such as free wi-fi or audio-video support if your spending reaches a certain level.

Services and Amenities

If your venue has a kitchen then they may well offer to cater your event, and they may waive your facility fee and only charge a down payment along with the cost of the food for each attendee. If your venue doesn't have a kitchen, then they may have a partnership with a local food provider that they require you to use. Just make sure you check out the food on offer in advance as it can have a negative effect on your attendee's experience if it is not good enough.

Also check whether your venue has chairs, tables and linen that you can use, as if they do it can save you a lot of money - as long as it matches your theme. This is also the case with AV equipment as well - if it is built in to the venue then you won't have to source your own.

Layout

Even though venue searching happens early on in the event planning process you will still need to have an idea as to what sort of activities you will be undertaking, what amenities you need and what your attendees will also require.

When it comes to narrowing down your selection of venues, make sure you have a floor plan for each so that you can walk through your favourites and mark where the plug sockets are and where AV units are located as well. The floor plan and layout will affect certain aspects of your event, such as the flow of traffic through your event and whether you can use a stage or not for your speakers.

Ambiance

Make sure you take into account the decor of your venue such as the style of the architecture and what the interior design conveys. After all, the ambiance you want to create inside an exhibition will be different to that of a gala. The less the current ambiance of the venue matches your event, the more decorating you will have to do to improve it.

Insurance

Many venues will not even do business with you if you don't have insurance. They will usually require you to have a certain amount of liability as well as well as naming them for additional insurance for the event. It is a good idea to get this in place early on in your event planning process to make sure all of the wording is correct.

Accessibility

Accessibility means that everyone is able to access your event, even if they have special needs or a disability. You therefore need to know what your attendees needs are before you start planning - ad reviewing recent events hosted by your organisation may help you with this.

Cost and Event Date Flexibility

Being able to be flexible on your event date may mean that you are able to negotiate a better price for your event. The venue may have dates in their calendar that they want to fill and so may offer you discounted pricing on these dates.

As you can see there is a lot to think about when looking for conference rooms. However, if you take all of the above into consideration when doing your research, you should end up with the perfect venue for your event.

Author: Gladys Requina
04-Jun-2019