Planning an Event or Conference - 3
- Booking Your Venue
Provisional Bookings
Most venues will hold a provisional booking for a client to enable them to consider their options. The length of time will vary from two days to two weeks, largely depending upon the time of year. Few venues will hold provisional bookings indefinitely. Increasingly venues will release your provisional booking if another client is prepared to confirm before you have made up your mind.
First Option Bookings
This is where you have the venue on provisional hold above other clients. Usually venues will contact you if they have a second enquiry for the date that you have on hold, or if they are not kept updated with progress of the booking.
Second Option Bookings
This is where another client already has the venue on hold at the time of your enquiry and you put them on hold as well. Usually we would only do this if this were the venue of choice. We would normally ask the venue to chase the first option booking in an attempt to gain first option status.
Confirmed Bookings
When is the venue confirmed? In the majority of cases the venue will be confirmed on completion of a confirmation form or provisional contract. At the time of contract there is flexibility with numbers – final numbers are generally required seven days prior to the event.
Cancellation Policies
Different venues differ and the contract will stipulate any charges in the event of a cancellation. Usually the lead-time of the cancellation will dictate what costs will be incurred.
