While everyone will have their own preference to how they find a location, here are three ways you can find a location for your event:
1. Ask Your Network
Colleagues, friends and family are all great sources for information on event locations to consider. They not only attend events, but they are dining out, going to the theatre and reading about all kinds of locations for events that you may not know of. A referral is a really great way to also get to know the venue management and event experience before you book. Don’t forget to ask your online network too! Put the word out on Twitter, Facebook and your LinkedIn Groups. Also stop by the Q&A sites like Quora and you will be sure to get some great recommendations.
2. Read a Magazine
A great source for event locations are popular local interest magazines like NY Mag and Time Out NY. These not only highlight locations where awesome events are already happening, but a lot of times venues are featured and sometimes even a venue directory at the end of the magazine as well. You’d be surprised how many great ‘hidden’ locations you will find that would be perfect for your event. Unfortunately you will still have to do a bit more searching to find the important details like capacity, food/beverage packages, availability and pricing.
3. Use the Internet
Avoid the general search of “event locations in NYC” in google, as that will lead you to individual locations that have paid a bunch or have just optimized their keywords to get listed first. Instead check out online venue directories like venuesonline.com, nycgo.com, bizbash.com. These industry sites have some great info on the various locations including pics and capacity. RFP sites like Cvent and EventNow also have a bunch of locations listed and allows you to submit your details in a form to have the venue followup at a later date with more details on the options available and price quotes for your event. However you are interested in saving time and effort, the newest way to check out event locations are venue booking sites like imbookin or eVenues. imbookin allows you to search locations and see pricing and availability on different packages and lets you select more than one package to add to your event cart so you can customize your event. eVenues focuses more on room rentals and bookings by the hour for meetings as an example. Both sites are making a huge impact in the venue search arena. As you can imagine, any tool that is available 24/7, at your leisure that helps you narrow down your options and get the information you want is a winner.
The perfect venue for your event is only one question or click away. Once you discover all the possibilities the hard part will be deciding which one to go with!
Related articles
- Choosing A Location with Your Ideal Event Package by @imbookin (lizkingevents.com)
- Event Tech of the Week: @imbookin (lizkingevents.com)
- imbookin Aims to Be Your One Stop Event Booking Service (eventmanagerblog.com)
