How to Work With Venues So They Send You Work
Venues send work to planners who make their job easier. Venue coordinators are regularly asked to recommend a planner, and the names they give are the planners whose events ran on time, whose suppliers respected the building and who left the room the way the contract said.
Getting on that list takes no advertising budget. It takes an introduction made before any event, then a record of being easy to host, repeated over several bookings. Both are within reach of a planner in their first year.
What a venue is judging you on
Taste matters less than new planners expect. A venue coordinator is responsible for the building, the staff and the booking that arrives the following morning, so the question they ask about a planner is whether that planner will create extra work for them.
Plenty of planners know this from the venue's side. Across the planners we speak with at the Event Planning Institute, roughly one in eight has worked on a hotel or venue events team in the last five years. They say coordinators remember how an evening ended for their own staff.
In practice a coordinator notices four things about every planner, and none of them is about design.
- Access times. Suppliers arrive inside their windows and use the entrance the venue specified, not the front door during another event.
- The run sheet. The venue receives it days in advance, and it answers their questions before they have to ask.
- The building. Nothing is taped to walls, no candles appear where they are banned, and no furniture is moved without asking.
- The load-out. The room is clear by the contract deadline, with no overtime charges and no hired items left behind.
None of this is glamorous, and that is the opportunity. A planner who gets all four right on two or three events becomes the easy recommendation.
The run sheet is the easiest of the four to get right, because it is entirely in the planner's hands. A document that names every supplier's arrival window and entrance answers most of what a venue would otherwise phone about. Our guide to writing an event run sheet covers how to build one.
Making the first approach
The introduction works best before any client is involved. Ask the venue for twenty minutes and a walk around the spaces. Treat it as research rather than a pitch, because that is what it is.
Ask what the coordinator wishes planners did differently. The answer is usually specific, such as suppliers arriving through the wrong door or run sheets arriving the night before. It tells the planner exactly how to stand out in that building, and few planners think to ask.
Come prepared with the questions a working planner would need answered anyway. A short list covers most venues.
- Where is the loading dock, and how early can suppliers get in?
- Which outside caterers and bars are allowed, and is there a fee for bringing one in?
- What is the room's capacity for a seated dinner and for a standing reception?
- What time does amplified music have to stop?
- What insurance does the venue need to see from a planner?
The capacity question matters more than it seems. Fire codes such as the NFPA 101 Life Safety Code shape how many people a room may hold and how exits stay clear, and venues take those limits seriously. A planner who asks sounds like someone who has run events before.
Once the visit is done, the relationship builds in a set order, as the sequence below shows.
- 1
Visit and ask
Tour the spaces, learn the access rules and ask what planners get wrong there.
Hands on notes on how this venue likes to work - 2
Follow up in writing
A short thank-you with contact details and the kinds of events the planner runs.
Hands on a name the coordinator can find again - 3
Bring a client
Recommend the venue when it genuinely suits a client's brief.
Hands on a first event together - 4
Run it smoothly
Send the run sheet early, confirm access times in writing and leave the room as agreed.
Hands on a coordinator with nothing to complain about - 5
Close the loop
Thank the team afterwards and pass on praise for staff who were excellent.
The third step is the one planners overlook. A referral relationship runs both ways, and a venue is more inclined to recommend a planner who has brought it bookings. Recommend a venue only when it suits the client, though, since a poor fit damages both relationships at once.
Reading the venue contract before it costs money
The venue contract is where a planner shows competence to the venue and protects the client in the same act. Most of its expensive surprises sit in a handful of terms, set out in the table below, and reading them at the start avoids the arguments that sour a relationship later.
| Term | What to check | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Access hours | When suppliers may enter and when the room must be clear | Overtime charges and a rushed load-in |
| Minimum spend | The food and drink total the client must reach | A shortfall may be billed as a room fee |
| Preferred suppliers | If outside caterers or bars are allowed, and at what fee | It can rule out suppliers already booked |
| Noise curfew | When amplified music must stop or drop in volume | The band or DJ must be briefed to match |
| Damage and restoring the room | Who pays, and how damage is recorded | Disputes over the deposit afterwards |
| Insurance | Required cover and additional insured wording | No certificate can mean no access |
Raise questions about these terms before the contract is signed rather than on the day. Venues tend to respect a planner who asks precise questions early, because it means fewer surprises for their own team as well.
The insurance row is the one a new planner can settle in advance. The Small Business Administration's guide to launching a business explains the general liability cover most venues ask for, and a broker can then match the limits to the venue's wording.
Commissions and disclosure
Some venues pay planners a referral commission when a client books through them. Accepting one is not wrong in itself, but hiding it is. A planner who recommends a venue because it pays them, without telling the client, has a conflict the client would object to. Disclose any commission in writing, and recommend on fit first.
On the day, in someone else's building
Event day is where the relationship is really made. Arrive before the first supplier, find the duty manager and walk through the plan together, including anything that changed since the run sheet went out. That five-minute conversation prevents most of the calls the venue would otherwise make to the planner later.
Through the event, the planner is the one point of contact for every outside supplier. When a florist needs a ladder or a DJ needs another power outlet, the request goes through the planner rather than straight to venue staff. The venue deals with one organized person instead of eight separate ones.
At the end, do the final walk-through with the duty manager, not alone. Note anything damaged or left behind, agree on it there and then, and confirm in writing the next morning. A disagreement settled in the room rarely becomes a dispute over the deposit.
Keeping the relationship going
A referral list stays current through small, regular contact. Send a thank-you after each event, tell the coordinator when one of their staff was excellent, and share photographs of their spaces they can use with credit. Specific praise tends to be remembered, since venues hear about problems far more often.
When something does go wrong, tell the venue before they hear it elsewhere. A supplier who scuffed a wall or overran the curfew is the planner's responsibility to raise, with an apology and a plan to put it right. Handled openly, a mistake rarely costs a referral.
Venues are one source of work among several. The others, from past clients to local search, are covered in how to get event planning clients. A venue relationship is often the cheapest of them to keep up, because it rests on work the planner is doing anyway.
Where the course goes further
Unit 6, Winning Your First Bookings, covers approaching venues and suppliers so they refer work, and it is part of both courses. The Fast Track Course adds Unit 8, Venues, Suppliers and Negotiation, which covers reading a venue contract for the terms that cost money later, negotiating rates and minimums without damaging a relationship, and handling commissions ethically.
For the full route into the work, including where venue relationships fit in the first months, see how to become an event planner.
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