How to choose a venue finder
Choose a venue finder on five things: whether anything makes one venue easier for them to recommend than another, what they are tied to, whether they can answer specific questions about rooms before you brief them, who will personally be on your event, and what they do when something goes wrong. Price is not a useful comparison, because venue finding in Australia is normally free to the organiser. What varies is independence, market knowledge and who actually does the work.
We have written this so it is useful whether or not you choose us. The five questions below are the ones we would want asked of any finder, including us, and the last section is honest about the events where a venue finder is not what you need.
1. Ask whether anything makes one venue easier to recommend than another
Venue finding in Australia is normally free to the organiser, so the thing to compare is not price. It is whether every venue on your shortlist arrived there for the same reason.
If something makes one property easier to put forward than another, the shortlist has a quiet reason to lean, and you will never see it. So ask plainly: is there anything that makes one of these venues better for you than the rest? A finder who answers that without hesitating is telling you something worth knowing. We set our own position out on the how we are paid page, before anyone asks.
2. Ask what they are tied to
Some venue lists look like the market and are not. A venue marketplace shows you properties that have opted in and, in most cases, paid to be there, which is why several of the largest conference venues in the country do not appear on them at all. Other finders sit inside a hotel group, or hold a contract with one, and their recommendation begins somewhere before your brief does.
None of that makes them a poor choice. It just changes how you read the shortlist. Ask whether the list you are being shown is opt-in inventory or sourced across the whole market, and ask whether any hotel group has a claim on the answer.
3. Ask a specific question about a room before you brief them
Everyone says they know the market. It is easy to test. Pick a venue you are considering and ask what the main room actually holds in the setup you need, cabaret rather than theatre, and what the ceiling height is where you want to rig. A finder who knows will tell you in a sentence. A finder who has to go away and ask the venue will be doing that at every stage of your event, and you will feel it in the timeline.
You can also ask them to show you their work. We publish the capacities, ceiling heights and floor areas we hold, read off each venue’s own published specifications rather than a directory, starting with the Sydney venues we publish. Where a venue publishes nothing, we say so rather than estimating.
4. Ask who will actually be on your event
Ask for the name of the person who will take your brief, and whether that same person is still there at the final invoice. In a lot of businesses the answer is no: a salesperson wins the work and a coordinator inherits it. That handover is where detail goes missing, and it usually goes missing about a week before the event.
At CVBS there are four of us. Karen Jepson and Anthony Jepson are the directors, and Chantelle and Rychelle handle briefs alongside them. Whoever picks up your brief is who you will be dealing with all the way through.
5. Ask what they do when it goes wrong
Most of the value in a venue finder is invisible until something moves. Numbers fall short of the room block. A speaker cancels and the program shifts by a day. A venue changes hands between contract and event. Ask what the attrition clause will look like, what the cancellation schedule steps down to, and who negotiates it if you need to move.
A finder who talks fluently about contract terms has been through it. A finder who only talks about finding you a beautiful room has not, or is not the one who will be there when it matters.
When a venue finder is not the right call
There are events where this is the wrong service, and it is worth saying so.
- Small, familiar, flexible. If you are booking a boardroom you have used before, for twelve people, on dates that could move, go direct. It will be faster and you already know what you are getting.
- You need the event run, not the venue sourced. If what you actually need is the program built, speakers managed, abstracts reviewed, registration and sponsorship handled and someone on the floor for three days, that is a professional conference organiser. A venue finder sources and negotiates the venue and the accommodation and then hands you a signed contract. Plenty of large conferences use both, and the two work well together.
- Your organisation runs a mandated procurement panel. A finder can still help you prepare and compare, but the panel process leads and you should say so at the first conversation rather than the last.
- You already have a negotiated hotel program you are happy with. Then the honest answer is that the gains are smaller. It is still worth having someone test the rate, but do not expect the same difference.
The five questions, in order
- Does what you earn change depending on which venue I choose?
- Is your venue list opt-in, or sourced across the whole market?
- What does this specific room hold in the setup I need, and how high is the ceiling?
- Who takes my brief, and are they still there at the final invoice?
- What does the attrition and cancellation schedule look like, and who negotiates it if we need to move?
If you would like to put those to us, our brief form takes a couple of minutes, or you can read how the process works first. If you are still deciding whether to use anyone at all, we have written an honest comparison of using a sourcing company against booking direct.
