How to Continually Wow your Guests when Using the Same Venue Each Year
How to Continually Wow your Guests when Using the Same Venue Each Year
Using the same venue year on year and need to surprise guests? Ever wondered how you make the same venue look the different over and over again? There’s nothing wrong with the familiar! There are so many reasons to book the same venue year on year – great service! Great food! Good location, excellent motorway links, ample rooms that you need – and the list goes on!
However, for guests, the same venue can start to feel bland and they start to second guess what to expect at the next event. Not great when you want them to feel invigorated, excited and ensure that this year’s conference is a game changer! Whilst new venue search is an option, it’s hard to start again as well as trying to relay the company’s key strategic message and juggle the extra work that the new boss keeps piling on you! So, what’s the solution to a completely awe-inspiring conference at the same venue? At Eventologists, we think it’s about delivering newness every time and making the same venue look completely different!
- Firstly, the room – if changing the room isn’t an option, then how about changing the floorplan, consider theatre style seating if you had cabaret last time
- Change the stage set – wow them with a new stage and backdrop which changes from the day to the evening. Work with your AV company of Creative agency to shake up the status quo
- Do cool stuff at lunch – Venues now offer so many more options such as street food to make lunch fun and interactive with finger licking good food!
- Add some interactive sessions that they would not ordinarily get to do – It will be a talking point!
- Transform the venue from day to evening! If you’ve never had a themed event – dip your toe – trust us, it will be a party that they do remember and look forward to. If a theme is a bit too risky, but you don’t want the event to feel too corporate; use colour, unusual table centres, and nice touches like funky bars and furniture! The less rigid and corporate the event feels the more relaxed your guests will be. Add entertainers that add ambience in the room and create great picture moments. If you had a DJ last year, what about a band this year? Think about the time of year, can you keep corporate but take influence from the time of year – e.g. add an enchanted touch in Autumn and keep it fresh during Spring?
As we all enter an era of complex marketing and sales with social media, unusual venue openings and a plethora of ways of communicating; customers are shopping around each year looking for newness or new venues. Venues who want to retain existing business really need to inspire them with ideas of what their event can be rather than be sold the features of the room. It’s a different mindset to showing the more practical elements of the room but its fast-becoming what venues are focusing on to convert new sales and maintain existing customers. Knowledge of how they can transform the room or partners who can help them to think out of the box is an essential sales skill, especially for customer retention.
If you’re a conference organiser, transforming spaces and venues is much easier than venue search and starting the process all over again! Working with creative partners who will help you to give freshness each year to get 5-star guest feedback is the panacea that every conference planning and event agency strive for. Maybe just thinking about the same differently could be just the answer!
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