Finding and Renting the Right Venue

Hold your next event in just the right place with simple planning

By Greg Brown

Hosting clients in the local coffeehouse, again? Thinking about maybe having the end-of-year banquet at your home? You worry about your business image -- nice business cards, a professional receptionist -- so it's probably time to take events more seriously, whether customer-facing or internal.

Getting the right space for a company event is not rocket science, but it helps to do some advance thinking and, if need be, hire consulting help for large bashes.

Let a hotel handle the details

Most major hotel chains are in the very competitive business of landing your event, large or small. Rooms can vary from board-like settings to huge halls for hundreds of guests. They'll deal with caterers, sound, technical equipment -- even hire transportation.
Try: You've got to keep them honest. You can start with the couple of well-known chains in your town, but Web bookers increasingly cater to event needs, including consolidators like Hotel Planner and Web Event Planner. Major travel sites, including Hotels.com and Expedia have group travel subsites, as does Groople.com.

If the event is big or important enough, hire a pro

You'll have enough to do keeping your clients and employees connecting and doing business. If the thought of talking to caterers or worrying about sound systems is too much, bring in an event planner.
Try: There are large event planning companies, like Meeting Expectations, PartyPop, BestPartyEver and directories of planners, including Corporate Event Channel and The Great Event.

Shake it up! Sometimes another hotel is...yet another hotel

Reward your people, impress your clients or just plain break away from the expected. There are lots of non-traditional venues, like botanical gardens, cruises to nowhere and museums, looking for your event business.
Try: You could just assume the local point of interest can be rented, and you might be right. Or take a look at some of the spots online for ideas. Venues databases that help set up unusual meetings include Unique Venues and Ultimate Venues, More traditional, and global, venue searches can be done at BusinessMeetings.com. Web site Mpoint offers meeting planning ideas and special deals for corporate planners.

Keep track of complex events with software

A one-off event doesn't need software, and a good manager with a simple spreadsheet and a phone can do a lot, but a regular schedule of events will mean someone doing full-time support, audience generation, contractor negotiations and the like. It can get complicated.
Try: If you find your staff getting overwhelmed by your events, consider software, like FASTbook, Marketing Pilot, Cvent, EMS, EventPro and Capterra and online registration systems, including Acteva, Thriva and EventBrite,