By Lauren Grech, CEO, LLG Agency & Adjunct Professor, New York University
Hotel developers have recognised the need to create experiences within their hotel, resort or venue, meaning they are now redesigning the existing spaces within their restaurant, beachside, poolside or ballroom areas – specifically to cater towards events.
But what are the requirements necessary to build a proper event space? What event space components will make your space more sellable to attract events and/or more experiential for events?
If you are building a house, you would hire an architect; so, if you are developing an event space, then the requirement should be to hire an event management expert to define your event space criteria.
“As meeting and event planners, it is our responsibility to stay current with trends, whether it’s colours, themes, décor elements, culinary creations or technology,” Kate Patay, executive director of sales and marketing for Creative Coverings, explained to The Meeting Magazines.
In other words, event management experts are more qualified than anyone from the hospitality industry to work hand-in-hand with your design and architectural teams and build an event space that matches your event objectives, as well as your event brand identity.
“The best practices surrounding event venues are evolving just as quickly as the event industry itself,” Elias Grouhi, content strategist at Social Tables, told Bizzabo.
Pair that with the increasing demand for non-traditional meetings, events and weddings, and it becomes apparent that hospitality managers cannot keep up without the help from the event industry game-changers themselves.
Moving into the components necessary for a successful and mouldable event space – hotels, resorts and venues have to stop qualifying a large space in a dimly lit ballroom as the ideal event space. With no view or windows, the wrong carpet colour, oversized chandeliers, we hear countless times that it’s not what the consumer is looking for. Additionally, restaurants do not qualify as an event space if it’s not properly designed with the right capabilities to host an event.
An event management professional has a comprehensive view of all these event components, and more, necessary not only for proper event execution, but from the perspective of the client’s needs. As the orchestrater of all event vendors and the clients, event management professionals ensure transparent and consistent flow of information from hotel to vendor, vendor to vendor, vendor to client, client to guest, etc. Therefore, they understand the event from the holistic perspective of all the different parties involved, the pain points of each of the different elements from their perspective, and the solutions and preventative measures needed.
For example, over the past two years, I went around the world learning about different event criteria from the perspective of different venues and vendors to determine what is needed to properly execute an event in any part of the world.
This led to purveying event management criteria that defines an event space by the event capabilities and what each of the vendors, clients, guests and staffing needs are – criteria that is accredited by New York University Centre of Hospitality’s M.S. in Event Management programme, the first of its kind in the United States. Again, demonstrating the rapid growth and demand for standardisation of the event industry as it applies to hospitality.
Just like the hotel hires quality assurance professionals for hospitality, hotels should begin budgeting for quality assurance professionals in the event sector to ensure their current spaces are up to code, or their future spaces will be built to acquire the maximum event-driven revenue.
Lauren Grech is the CEO of LLG, a bilateral wedding company comprised of an international event management team and global wedding agency, which operates within five independent industries: hospitality, tourism, media, education, and weddings. LLG Agency grew out of Lauren’s international event management and design firm that specializes in luxury destination weddings and experiential events in New York City and worldwide.
Author: Molly Hookings
Molly joined the editorial team in March 2019. She has several years’ experience working in broadcast and journalism, as well as marketing and PR. Past experience includes working for the BBC and independent publishing houses. If you have a story you think Molly might be interested in, please email: molly@eventindustrynews.com
