Venue Costs
The Insiders Guide to Keeping Them in Check

Venue costs are a substantial part of most organisations' event expenditure and there are ways of ensuring you do not spend any more than you need to without compromising on standards.

After a long career helping companies control their event expenditure, I hope I can talk with some conviction and with a degree of inside knowledge about tips that may help you save your organisation substantial amounts of money.

For example:-

1) The great delegate rate myth
Let's presume you need to organise a day meeting for 150 delegates theatre-style with lunch and two tea/coffee breaks. The hotel you want quotes you, say, £55.00 Day Delegate Rate, which is within your budget. Fine but now ask them for split rates. Let's say they quote you room hire of around £1750.00, £3.50 for teas/coffees (x2) and £20.00 for lunch. Work it out for yourself - that means the price you will pay per delegate is less than £40.00 rather than £55.00. Same conference room, same service, same facilities - just £2400.00 cheaper!

2) Don't ask what the rate is - tell them what rate you want!
When you call a venue with a conference enquiry, don't just ask them what the rate is. The Conference Co-ordinator's job is the same as yours and mine - to do whatever benefits their company the most. In other words to get the best rate they can. So firstly do your homework - find out what their normal conference rate is. Let's say their published 24 Hour Rate is £185.00. If you ask what rate they will do, they may quote you, say, £170.00. However if you say, "I have a budget of £150.00", I will guarantee on many occasions you be offered that rate or somewhere near it. T

he same applies to Day Delegate Rates - tell them your budget is £20-25% less than their published rate and see how near they get.

3) Those expensive extras
You know the scenario. The Day Delegate Rate sounded good - bang on budget. But then you add on the extras and you start to realise the true cost. The syndicate rooms, the audio-visual equipment, the extra serving of coffee on arrival, the cakes with afternoon tea, etc. But you would be amazed at what you can get included at the time of the enquiry. SO ASK!

Don't forget many of the excellent dedicated management training centres and residential conference centres around the country automatically include syndicates, a/v equipment, unlimited tea and coffee, etc. so you won't even need to ask! 4) Know how attractive a particular piece of business is to the venue Be aware of what the slower periods are for many hotels and other conference venues, as they will have more flexibility on rates. For example, the key low times are:

There will, of course, be exceptions to the above, particularly if the venue is in a location not primarily reliant on corporate and/or conference business. But if you have any flexibility on when your event takes place, do keep the above in mind.

5) Short notice gold dust
If you have business for the next two, three or even four weeks, be aware of how much venues will want that business, because by then they will have a pretty good idea of how busy they are going to be over that period. So be ruthless, be shrewd, be bold and push those rates down!

6) Make your conference agency work for you
Be under no misapprehension - we are here to ensure our clients do not pay a penny more than they need to. We are inundated with special offers from venues, we know hotel rates inside out, we know how to get the best rates possible and we know how attractive a piece of business is to venues.

And it's a free service. And we save oodles of your time by doing all the work. And we can book any venue anywhere. And so on and so on.

We are on your side SO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF IT.

And if you haven't got a conference agency, for goodness sake get one. They can save you a lot of effort (because they do all the work) and money (see above) and eliminate the risks involved in booking venues you don't know, because their venue knowledge should be top notch (or you haven't got the right agency).

For more information telephone 01420 561165, e-mail nigel@completeeventsolutions.com or check out their website www.completeeventsolutions.com