Speaker 1: Hi event planners, Melanie here from eventplanningblueprint.com. So today I want to discuss seven tips to follow when you're choosing an event venue. And I know there are many other tips that I could provide and in fact, I would love to hear from you in the comments. So as we're going through, if there's something that you think is really valuable that our community needs to know about when it comes to selecting an event venue, please feel free to make a comment in the comment box below. Now having said that, anything that's spammy or appears spammy or promotional will be deleted. We want content that is going to be valuable to our audience or to all event planners who are watching our videos. This is not an opportunity to promote. So like I said, make your comments in the comment box below as we're going, but let's get into it. So there are a few things that, depending on the type of venue that you're looking for, the type of event that you're having, there are a number of things that you need to think about when considering the right venue for you. So we're going to keep this kind of as generic as possible today. We're not going to get really, really specific. So one of the first things that you want to consider is who are your guests? Who's going to be coming to the event that you're planning? And also what is the guest list size? Because that's going to dictate what type of venue that you can or cannot use. For example, maybe you've got 300 people coming to an event, but the event room only seats or accommodate up to 125. Obviously that's not going to work. So you really need to think about the guests and the guest size or the count of guests that are going to be invited to the event and that you anticipate coming. Because if you're doing something like a festival, you don't always know those hard numbers because you're not sending invitations out. Or if you're doing something like a trade show, for example, you don't always know how many people are going to show up. You can anticipate and you should do a bit of research based on other trade shows that either you've done or another event planner has done in the past that's similar, maybe even in another city. And then the type of marketing that you're doing to draw those people in because it is a public event. Number two is you want to think about the type of people that are going to be coming to your event. So what, for example, maybe you're going to be having an event with CEOs. So they could be all female CEOs. They might be a mix of female, male CEOs. Maybe they're all male. Maybe you're having brides to your event. And then you want to think about the type of event that will really appeal to the people that are going to be at your event. So let's just go back to the CEOs and use them as an example. So if you're going to be having the top performers or the leaders of corporations coming into an event venue, you want to make sure that it reflects their tastes and what they like and what they dislike. And so sometimes you're not going to pick necessarily a less expensive venue because in this case, they're probably used to having things that are a bit more upscale. So you want to make sure that you're reflecting that. You could even choose a unique venue if it's appropriate for the event type. And then of course for the client. So that's number two, just catering to the type of audience that you are going to have at your event. Number three, you want to make sure that it's convenient for your guests. So when I say convenient, what I mean is the location is convenient. And you might have people flying in from other cities or driving into town for your event. We want to make sure as much as possible that it's easily accessible for the event attendees. And you also want to think about what about drinking and driving? Are you going to be serving alcohol at your event? If you are, then you need to make accommodations for that because in many cases, the event hosts are liable. So you want to check with your insurance when you're thinking about adding alcohol into an event. But if that's the case, there's easy ways around that. So you can do things like hiring transportation that could be in the form of bus or limousines. You could even have taxis or if Uber or Lyft are available in your location, you can have those on standby as well. And then offer taxi chips or pay for the transportation for your guests to get home safely after they've had a night of drinking. And this comes up a lot when you're doing an event that is like a company event. So for example, we've got Christmas and the holidays are coming up, Hanukkah just passed. And so if you're having a holiday event, you want to make sure that you're getting all of your employees and your team, your staff home safely from your event. Okay, so that's number three, what's convenient for your guests? How can they can they easily get there? Can they easily get home and can they do it safely? And number four is weather. And this doesn't always come into play. Of course, it's going to depend on where you live or where the event is taking place. But let's say for example, you have a unique venue like a boat. So you definitely want to be watching the weather forecast if that's the case, and making sure that you have a backup venue for something like, you know, torrential rains or storms or in some cases hurricanes depending on where you are located and again, where your event is going to be taking place. So just having a backup is really key. Also just things like if you are having it in a place where you don't have inclement weather you know to that severity anyway, maybe it's going to be rain showers and you can provide umbrellas so that the guests can go from the transportation or from their cars into the venue and you can have people helping them with the umbrellas so that they're not getting wet and not getting soaked so they still look good for their event. Okay, so weather is another one that you want to consider when choosing an event venue. And again, this probably goes, this probably plays out more when you're doing an event in another location or in another country. All right, so moving on to number five, tip number five or step number five when you think about choosing an event venue is to really think about the event knowledge or sorry, not the event knowledge, the venue staff knowledge and experience. And you want to think about things like, you know, what kind of events have they done in the past? Are they used to doing the type of event that you're planning to do at their venue? And speaking not only to the catering manager or the food and beverage manager or even they may even have event staff on site depending on the type of venue that you are looking at but talking to the people who are actually going to be operating or running the event. So that could be waiters, it could be bell staff, it could be bartenders, having conversations with them just to get an idea or get a sense of what their experience is when it comes to the type of event that you're planning at their venue. You also want to find out what their fees include and also don't include so that there aren't any surprises. So in some cases, teardown and setup is included, in some cases it's not and it'll be an additional fee. So ask questions like that and make sure that you are aware beforehand so that you're comparing apples to apples. So if you're looking at two, three, maybe even up to five different types of venues in your location, then you are comparing apples to apples and making sure that everyone's kind of on the same page and you're asking the same questions, you're getting the answers that you need. Another piece that you want to check with the venue is what other services do they offer and what other services do you need? Making sure that they offer those services if they are indeed something that you need or if it's not something that they offer, then hiring out into another, like a third party company, another vendor. So these things can include parking, you might need parking attendance even. You might need security. In many cases, even smaller events will need security. There are many venues where having a hundred people or more requires having one or two security guards on hand or if you have even fewer than that in terms of attendees, if you have alcohol involved in your event, then you have to have security. So just finding that out and finding out what the venue offers will really help you when it comes to planning and especially saves you from any unexpected surprises during the event when you definitely don't want to be scrambling at the last minute to find these things so that your event runs smoothly. And last but not least, the seventh tip that I want to share with you here today is what are the venue fees? And I know this may or may not sound very obvious to you, but you want to find out again what is included in those fees and what is not included. And this kind of goes back to what I was just saying in step number six about other services and asking about what's included even in step five, I actually mentioned it as well. So finding out what's included, what's not included in those venue fees, and then you can make concessions based on that information that you have. And what I mean by that is just making sure that you've got all of your bases covered and if you need to hire out third party vendors for things like security or parking, or sometimes even catering. And some venues don't have catering on site, they might have preferred caterers, but making sure that you know what's involved, what's not involved or included, and then what fees are included. So in some cases, you might have a venue that doesn't have food and beverage on site, but they take a fee for it. So just making sure that you ask those really important questions when you're checking out different venues and again, comparing apples to apples versus apples to oranges. So those are the seven steps to helping you choose the right event venue for your next event and I would love to hear from you. So in the comment box below, let me know another tip that has helped you when choosing an event venue. There are lots and lots of tips that we can share here, but I would love to hear from you in the comment box. So go ahead and do that now, make a comment, let me know. And if you are looking at becoming an event planner, you're ready to take your knowledge and your education to that next level, come on over and join us at howtobeaneventplanner.com again howtobeaneventplanner.com where we will teach you the technical skills of how to plan events and how to be an event planner. The name says it all. So I look forward to seeing you over there. And if you haven't already, make sure that you like our Facebook page so that you can get notifications first when we are going live. And if you're watching the replay on YouTube, then subscribe to our YouTube channel and you'll get all the updated videos as soon as they are released. So I want to thank you all very much for joining me here today. I wish you nothing but the happiest of holidays over the next few weeks and I'll see you again in the new year. Have a great day. Bye.