bmotte
Venues believe that executing a flawless event experience is the key to getting planners to return for future events. However, is creating that experience via event execution too late in the process? Planners take their entire experience into account before deciding on returning for future events and creating a stress-free event experience is just one area of consideration. Equally important are the first interaction with the venue on its website and the experience working with the venue staff during the planning process. Venues that are able to deliver in all three areas will position themselves over competitors who do not.
Planners start their interaction with the venue during the evaluation stage. The venue markets to planners on their website where they provide the information planners needs in order to determine if the venue and its function space are suitable for their event. Too often, this is a frustrating experience for the planner because the information they need is contained on multiple webpages and/or on PDFs that need to be downloaded. Since the information is static, planners need to make an additional effort to determine how their event might fit in the venue and its function space before determining if the venue is a viable option.
Once the venue has been chosen, developing the room plan to guide the event staff in the setup of the function space is next. This can be a tedious process and potentially frustrating to both planner and venue staff. What if the planner wants to change the setup from banquet to a combination of banquet and classroom? How quickly can the venue staff create that new room plan? Will the venue staff frustrate the planner by insisting that the planner become more focused before creating a room plan? When the dust has settled and the final room plan has been created, only then can the event staff start working on the setup and execute the event.
As you can see, this is a three step process. It starts with venue and function space evaluation, moves to event planning, and then finally ends at event execution. It is the sum of these three experiences that will determine the likelihood of planners returning for future events. And since the average event generates $25,000 in group business revenue[1], it is to the benefit of the venue to focus on the planner experience during the entire journey and not just focus on the destination.
Amadeus Hospitality Diagramming provides venues with an online solution designed to market their venue and function space to planners in a highly interactive and visual way. It provides the critical information planners need to determine if a venue and its function space are feasible for their event. Once the business has been won, Amadeus Hospitality Diagramming creates the room plans utilized by the event staff to setup the function space and execute the event. To ensure the planner’s vision of the setup is correctly captured in the room plan, Amadeus Hospitality Diagramming enables planners to experience the room setup via an interactive 3D representation of the space from multiple angles.
[1] Average value of an RFP from MeetingBroker
