Every detail matters when selecting a corporate event venue, no matter how significant or trivial these details may seem.
They’re the difference between your guests having a memorable experience and coming away with a unanimously positive feeling about your business and wishing they’d never bothered to turn up.
You can avoid the latter fate by taking the below factors into consideration when planning your event.
1. Services and amenities
No, we don’t just mean food and drink (although it certainly helps to host an event at a venue that serves great food).
We also mean:
- Tables and chairs: Having access to this furniture not only allows you to build a closer rapport with your guests but it also adds a touch of style to your booth. In general, it enhances the guest experience.
- Audiovisual (AV) capabilities: If you’re looking to save on cost, you may want to select a venue that has built-in audiovisual equipment for you to use, rather than having to bring your own. We touch more on AV further down.
- Whiteboards and TVs: Again, if a venue has its own whiteboards and TVs and you can use them for your event, this will save you money and logistical hassle.
2. Location
Your venue should be well-connected to public transport networks such as airports and bus terminals, particularly if you’re bringing a lot of components to your event or have stakeholders attending from across the country (or world).
You should also consider the traffic situation in the immediate vicinity. Is your venue in a built-up area, and is congestion therefore more likely to affect timings? Or is it more out of the way, in which case getting to and from the venue is likely to be relatively straightforward?
You need to ask yourself these questions before committing to a specific venue.
3. Parking and accessibility
Designated parking is essential to your corporate event for two reasons:
- You don’t want guests turning up, getting frustrated because all of the spaces are taken, and having to park up the street (or, worse, not having anywhere else to park nearby).
- You want to be able to easily transport materials, components, or whatever else you require for your event in and out of trucks.
Leaning on the latter point, your chosen venue should have designed parking spots for larger vehicles such as trucks or buses.
It should also cater to people with mobility issues by providing facilities such as wheelchair ramps, elevators, and accessible entrances. Furthermore, signage and emergency lighting should be clear and well-lit for people with hearing and visual impairments.
4. Capacity and space
When it comes to venue capacity, you run the risk of either:
- Selecting a venue that can’t accommodate as many people as you’d allowed for in a given space, which could lead to overcrowding.
- Selecting a venue with a much larger capacity than your anticipated guest count.
For obvious reasons, we’d advise you to err on the side of caution and choose the latter, but there’s more to consider when choosing a corporate event venue than just plain numbers.
You also need to think about the type of seating you’re going to go with and how it fits into the wider space. For example, will you go with U-shape style seating, or auditorium, or something else?
What is the best type of seating to ensure that your guests are safe, comfortable, and can leave the building in the event of an emergency?
All of this needs to be taken into consideration.
So, too, does the sheer amount of space you’ll have. Will your setup crew have ample space in which to move around, lay the wiring, and carefully dismantle everything at the end?
Will you have enough room to mingle with guests and network during the event?
You can reach out to your potential venue to ask these questions, or we can do the groundwork on your behalf as part of our venue selection process.
5. Accommodation
Ensuring your guests have overnight accommodation is paramount if they’re traveling long distances and/or your event is happening across more than one day.
In an ideal world, your chosen venue will come with on-site accommodation, but not all venues will—yet they may be perfect for your event in just about every other aspect.
If it doesn’t, you can find nearby hotels and bed and breakfasts using sites like Booking.com, Expedia, Hotels.com, Kayak, and Google Hotels.
The demography of your guests is worth considering when looking at accommodation options. Are they likely to be ok with staying at a B&B, or would they prefer to stay at a luxury hotel?
We advise that you err on the side of caution and give them multiple options to choose from so that they can make the best choice based on their needs and financial capabilities.
Depending on the accommodation’s distance from your venue, you may also want to arrange transportation for guests. You may be able to take advantage of Uber and Lyft discounts for your event, too—simply Google ‘Uber and Lyft discounts for events’ and go from there.
6. WiFi and internet access
This is perhaps the most self-explanatory point in our article, but let’s paint a hypothetical (yet not inconceivable) picture.
It’s Day One of your event. You’ve spent months preparing for it. Your blood, sweat, and tears have gone into this moment.
You’ve prepared a presentation that’s going to blow everyone away and generate multiple high-quality leads for your business.
You’ve got your colleagues on standby, ready to share photos and videos of your event across social media.
Then, the internet stops working.
Attendees can’t get on the WiFi as it’s temperamental.
You’re experiencing technical issues left and right.
You get the point.
All of this looks bad on your company. That’s why making sure your potential venue has high-speed internet and WiFi is super important before you select it for your next event.
To test a venue’s internet speed, you can use a speed check app such as
http://www.speedtest.net or speedof.me.
This article contains lots more helpful tips on internet-related considerations (it relates specifically to small-to-medium-sized meetings, but many of these tips can apply to other event types).
7. Lighting and general ambience
Walk into any furniture showroom, and the lighting will instantly set a tone. How you feel about that showroom can be determined in a matter of seconds.
The same is true of your corporate event venue.
Your guests need to feel at home from the minute they enter, and you need to consider what ‘comfort’ means to them.
What vibe do you want to give off? Is it one of warmth, elegance, color, a mix of all three, or something else?
If your event involves numerous presentations, you may want to go for artificial lighting instead of a venue featuring big windows, sprawling views, and an abundance of natural light.
Or, you may decide a more natural aesthetic is best suited to your event.
Or, you may want to pick somewhere that has lots of natural light in the foyer and entrance points to the venue, but no windows in the meeting room.
Whatever type of lighting you think will resonate best with your audience, you need to select your venue based on this, having done your research.
But ambience is much more than just lighting. It’s the decor, colors, scents, music, and general layout (as we briefly touched on above).
Visiting your potential venue ahead of time will give you a real sense of the above and allow you to determine whether or not its ambience will create a memorable experience for your guests.
8. Acoustics and AV setup
How often have you been to a corporate event and been unable to hear yourself think or ended up with a hoarse voice by the end of it?
Do you really want your guests to feel the same? We didn’t think so.
That’s why acoustics need to be a major consideration.
And by ‘acoustics’, we don’t just mean noise levels. We mean things like minimizing echo, reverberation, and sound distortion.
The latter point is particularly important if your event involves speeches, presentations, or award ceremonies.
If the sound quality is lacking or distorted, your guests may not be able to hear an awful lot during a presentation or speech or may miss an important detail.
Some venues come with built-in audio-visual equipment that you can use and may state this on their website. If you’re unsure, you should contact them directly to find out whether this is the case or whether you need to bring your own equipment.
Related: Optimizing Event Venue Acoustics for Superior Sound and Privacy
9. Sustainability
Selecting a venue that has a clear commitment to sustainability will only reflect well on you, the event organizer.
There’s no getting away from the fact that event attendees are more environmentally conscious than ever, especially among the younger generations who will be attending corporate events for many years to come.
If you can demonstrate to them that you’re minimizing environmental impact and doing your part for the planet via your venue selection, guests are more likely to be inclined to attend your event.
Here are some examples of sustainability best practices you should look for in a potential venue:
- Working with local suppliers
- Comprehensive recycling and no single-use plastic policies.
- LED lighting
- On-site solar panels
All of the above examples demonstrate solid social and corporate governance (ESG) credentials.
These credentials could play a huge role in shaping guests’ perceptions and enabling you to secure more business in the long run.
10. Insurance
It’s a legal requirement, in some venues, for you to have liability insurance as a condition of hosting your event there.
This insurance covers you if someone is injured on-site or third-party property is damaged, and it’s deemed your fault. The latter event could easily occur, considering how much equipment is transported in and out of an event venue.
You need to check with any venue that you’re interested in hiring whether or not you need to purchase this insurance to host your event there. In any case, it’s worth having the insurance for peace of mind—you’d rather be covered in the worst-case scenario than face having to pay thousands, or potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars, out of your own pocket.
Create an event that rocks with The Trade Group
We have a track record extending back almost 40 years of putting together out-of-this-world events for our clients that hit the perfect note with their audiences.
Based in Dallas, Texas, we’ve worked with clients from all over the world, managing multiple aspects of their corporate events to ensure that it runs seamlessly.
Whatever your requirements, we specialize in creating captivating events that elevate your business to new heights.
If you’re interested in partnering with us for your next event, send us a note here or give us a call at 800-343-2005.
