An Event Team’s Guide to Picking the Perfect Venue

Remember when planning events was all about getting people in the room? Well, today, that’s only half the battle. Achieving event success now means turning an event into a memorable experience, and event planners are feeling the pressure — so much so that 80% report the gig involves more experience creation than it did two to five years ago. (A day of back-to-back speakers in a ballroom might as well be the equivalent of trying to sell millennials pagers.)

But just how should a planner go about creating experiences? Sure, it might feel like alchemy, but if there’s a recipe that event teams can follow, the first and most important ingredient might just be finding the right venue. And in the modern world of meetings and events, that’s a task that goes far beyond the age-old adage of “rates, dates, and space.”

In this guide, I'll cover:

Chapter 1: Why does the venue matter?

Chapter 2: Your objective should decide your destination.

Chapter 3: How is venue sourcing evolving?

Chapter 4: Creating space within the venue.

Just what is a “purposeful meeting?” A purposeful meeting is an event that takes a holistic lens to success — focusing beyond the content that’s presented. It incorporates elements of behavioral science, wellbeing, and personalization to further engage attendees and meet the overall event objective.

It all starts with looking at the event space as something more than just the place where content gets delivered. The venue — and the way it’s set up — should elevate all of the elements that the attendees find important. So to choose the right venue, we need to start by asking ourselves: What do attendees care about?

Based on a recent survey of 180 planners, it largely boils down to these  four things:

• Access to interactive technology
• Flexibility of the space to meet the event objective
• Availability of networking spaces where attendees can engage each other
• Opportunity to discover authentic local culture, food, and experiences

Focus on what you can control.

Not every piece of the event is in a planner’s control. Think about it: The way peers interact with one another, the overall energy in the room — these are the “intangibles” that we can’t predict or force.

What we can control, however, are what we like to call the “tangibles.” Through these, we can at least try to prepare for the elements that are ultimately out of our hands. The city, venue, room setup, seating, food and beverage offering, AV, decor, agenda — all of these help set the stage.

Of all of the “tangibles,” choosing the venue is the single most important. It has a direct impact on the rest, and, more importantly, it has a direct impact on an attendee’s decision to attend. (72% of event attendees say destination is a significant factor in whether or not they attend an event.)

Every piece of the event needs to tie back to the objective, and the destination isn’t any different. You wouldn’t have a snowboarding expo in Miami, nor would you have an electronic music festival in Wyoming — although both are pretty entertaining to think about.

Step one is always to nail down that objective at a high level. Marriott’s Meetings Imagined initiative does a really great job of this, and splits possible objectives out into seven actionable buckets: (1) celebrate, (2) decide, (3) educate, (4) ideate, (5) network, (6) produce, and (7) promote.

At first glance, there are probably certain buckets that stick out as being fairly different, like “celebrate” and “educate.” One would imagine that you don’t want attendees three cocktails deep when you’re trying to get them to retain information, as much as they might not mind that. (Hey, everybody learns differently.) But when it comes to other objectives that seem pretty similar — say, for instance, celebrate and promote — how should event pros be thinking about the difference in approach?

Well, if the objective is to promote, the venue should be one that’s going to help extend your reach. Planners should spring for a venue that will get attendees and media actively sharing as extra arms for event promotion. Chances are, not a lot of folks want to share the inside of a hotel or a convention center, but move that same event to an out-of-the-box venue like a pop-up space, and things might just go viral.

Forbes’ Venue Strategy and Why It Worked

One of the best examples of objective-based venues in action is Forbes’ Under 30 Summit last October. Their team split the event out into four different venues throughout Boston and organized them around four thematic content buckets: Tech, Capital, Impact, and Create. It was brilliant on a few different levels:

1. Spreading things out throughout the city took advantage of attendees’ desires for authentic local experiences. They got to explore and experience the city, just by being a part of the event.
2. Giving each venue a theme opened up the opportunity to tailor the setup specifically for the objective and content that came with that theme.
3. It allowed people to personalize their agenda around the content they wanted to see. No need to nap through any speakers. (Not that any of us ever do that...)

The most exciting example was a piece of the Summit focused on closing the gender gap in technology.  Forbes teamed up with MIT to host a day-long event on campus focused on spurring change and making some much-needed progress in the field. Ultimately, 500 women came together on a traditionally male-dominated campus to make their mark on a woefully male-dominated industry.

The event’s unique location made it so much more impactful than just funneling everyone into a ballroom. They took it to the heart of the problem, and chose a city just minutes from Boston, a symbol of revolution. Now that’s how you start a revolution!

What’s important in a venue?

A lot of the base elements of an event that used to run the show — like WiFi and AV — are becoming more and more standard everyday. This frees event teams up to focus on more unique elements that (like intriguing venues) might not have even been on the list ten years ago — and that’s exactly what’s happening. Studies show that events are gauging a venue’s value differently than they were just as recently as 2016.

Today, you can meet pretty much anywhere.

And we mean ANYWHERE: museums, nightclubs, concert venues, repurposed warehouses, hip startup offices… the list goes on. The demand for these types of venues keeps increasing, and with it so too does the supply. All the while, things like hotel infrastructure become less and less important. Event teams can find non-traditional venues, attendees can find a place to stay on Airbnb — and everybody’s happy. Well, except for hotels.

Social Tables lets DC events use their office space completely free.

And that spike in demand for nontraditional venues isn’t some Yanny and Laurel scenario, it’s here to stay. The Amex Global Meetings Forecast expects it to jump 3.8% over the course of the year. Plus, ever-improving technology (like venue search platforms) is making it easier and easier for planners to connect directly with nontraditional spaces they might not have ever know existed.

Setting up the space within the venue is just as important as choosing the venue itself. With a little bit of elbow grease, some imaginative thinking, and the right event diagramming tool, planners can make even the most mundane venue shine.

Something as simple as offering up different seating options can go a long way in how attendees engage and interact. TEDXSommerville went so far as to give attendees pillow chairs for the event, which took place in a climbing gym. Which was almost as epic as…

C2 elevates their chair game.

Photo Credit: Sebastien Roy

No, your eyes are not mistaking you. Those are indeed hanging trapeze chairs. C2 in Montréal — which could be considered the pinnacle of experience design — used hanging chairs to promote more networking, along with a whole slew of other creative setups. The payoff? Creative setups like this one led to 3,000 scheduled face-to-face meetings between attendees. Because let’s face it, we’d all talk to just about anyone for an excuse to sit in a trapeze chair.

Take these frameworks, sprinkle in some new technology, and you’ll find yourself choosing a venue that helps you execute great events and increase attendance. Start by identifying the objective, then let your imagination do the rest — your attendees will thank you. So will your registration numbers.