OFFER THAT CAN NOT BE REFUSED: INSTRUCTIONS FOR EVENT VENUE

The Moscow city is full of different events everyday, and it is not surprising that every day in the capital there are new event venues opens - banquet and exhibition halls, conference venues, quest rooms, multi-format spaces. And the owners of existing sites usually decided to expand opportunities for their customers and whanted to upgrade the available space. In that and in other cases the question arises - what exactly to do? What are the priorities for the organizers when choosing a site and which of them they can reccomend to their clients?

1. Schemes of the site

The first thing that is always requested from the site is the scheme / layouts. Well, from this point even the largest and most serious sites having a problems. Sometimes the scheme remained from the previous owner, and there are no important elements, pillars on it, and sometimes there are no whole halls built by the new owner. Or - there are the BTI schemes that is rather difficult for an event manager to work with, as they are overloaded with unnecessary technical information and poorly printed. The sizes on the schemes may not coincide with reality - but on the events with a tight seating every centimeter is important. There is not even a meter grid to initially orient in the preparation of the first proposal to the client.

So why not to prepare an "organizational package of schemes":

• clean, neat, with the general geometry of the space - for the organizers, so that it would be easy to show the client the options for seating and arrangement of activities (immediately insert it into the presentation and save a lot of time - believe me, you will be especially grateful for the latter);
• technical scheme - with all hatches, fire guards, heights, a meter grid (so that the technical director and organizer can plan the set-up in more detail).

A 3D model of the room is a must for every modern site. Nobody has been providing materials in the form of pencil drawings for a long time, customers want to see what their event will look like in the future.

2. Actual information

The client decided to hold his event with you, which means that the stage of a detailed study of the project and adaptation of the organizers' rapid creativity to the existing capabilities of the site is beginning. Therefore, up-to-date technical documentation will be required here - electrical power, the operational status of the hatches, and the calculation of the weight loads of ceiling structures.

It is extremely important to know the latest information, as firstly, it is a matter of guests' safety, and secondly, the necessary conditions for the implementation of customer ideas.

Unfortunately, site management very often follows the path of prohibition - from the fact that they have not previously encountered one or another idea (for example, flying drones over people - in a format permitted by Russian law) or simply “just in case”.

Therefore, it is important to give your customers the correct, relevant information, and not force them to either give up their ideas or conduct additional checks.

3. Professional communication with the client

In addition to addressing global issues (paragraph 2), throughout the entire preparation period of the event, many small and not very organizational issues arise. And in all these moments the site is represented by a specific manager - this is important for further relations with the client.

All the foreign sites on which we worked in Europe, Asia and the United States, from exhibition centers and hotels to historic villas under the protection of UNESCO, and even the Catholic church, have always come to meet us. It is not difficult to imagine what restrictions, concerns and risks arose for the sites when we wanted to put more sound, suspend a huge chandelier or scratch their historic mosaic on the floor with our trusses. They never forbade anything to us “just like that”, they always suggested ways to solve certain issues, even if by the way of extra cost. And an important moment - it was always polite and professional.

Event organizers do their job, trying to surprise the client, give him the coolest event, with a lot of chips and unusual solutions. They do not know the site as its owner knows. And they need a polite and smart host.

4. Rental agreement

In each event, there is not the most interesting organizational moment that often causes controversy - this is the documentation, or rather, the issues of delineation of liability and insurance of mutual risks.

All the moments described in the previous text are often solved by various acts of delineation of responsibilities, acts of acceptance of the site and other documents in which the responsibility of the parties is recorded. And it is right. The approach to organizing this documentation is often incorrect. If there are no documents in the package of the site, then everything is clear (there is no acceptance certificate - you will not find the culprit). Because of this, some sites, on the contrary, are too overdoing the number of documents and require a letter on the official form with the seal and signature of the general manager for each part. And even the most responsible and orderly organizer is forced to drown in tons of letters, letters of attorney and other things.

Both this and that are bad. The task of all this documentation is to provide both parties with a comfortable, quiet work. So that all parties correctly understand their degree of freedom and responsibility to each other. Therefore, it is important to initially form the correct, sufficient package of documents, to explain to people at the start what document you need and why you need it, and then everyone will be comfortable, without unnecessary mutual suspicions, to work for the benefit of a future event.

Conclusion

Thoughts about improving the interaction of venues - organizers - clients are constantly spinning in everyone's head. Various situations arise that can be resolved by accumulating both positive and negative customer experience. And it is clear that it is impossible to find the perfect interaction algorithm. But this does not mean that you do not need to increase your level every day.