1. What do you understand by site selection? Explain the influencing factors in the determination
of your event site.
Site selection is the process of examining multiple options and assessing their relative advantages and
disadvantages. Site selection comes after the needs assessment is completed. If you select a site before
the needs assessment, you may compromise on key design aspects due to site limitations. When
organizing an event, you're confronted with many decisions, but choosing the right venue and location
is the one decision that will have the largest impact on your event. Everything from the date of the
event, speaker lineups, catering options, and attendees experience depend on the event venue and
location you select.
Location
A convenient location means different things for different events. For an event with attendees within a
limited geographic range, a venue within a reasonable distance from most attendees’ homes or places
of work may make sense. However, if many attendees will be traveling from out of town, hosting the
event at a venue near the airport or their hotels will be beneficial. Better still, if attendees are being
housed at a single location, hosting the event at that hotel mitigates the need for valet parking and the
chance that attendees will be late due to getting lost.
Accessibility
Accessibility refers to the possibility that everyone, especially those with special needs, can access the
building and its amenities. Before you can answer this question, you’ll need to understand who your
attendees are and what their needs are. You’ll probably know whether there will be children at your
venue, but you may not know if there will be individuals with other special needs. In this situation,
reviewing recent events hosted by your organization may give you a sense of this.
Cost
As a cost-conscious organizer, you may want to keep the venue cost down to allow more room in your
budget for food and beverages and entertainment. Being flexible on the date can be a great negotiating
tool, as certain days of the week tend to cost less.
Ambiance
Pay special attention to the existing decor inside the venue, the style of the architecture and what does
the building’s interior convey. If you’re holding a gala, you’ll likely need different venue
accommodations than you would for an expo. The less the ambiance matches the desired feeling of
your event (upscale, high tech, etc.) the more decorating you’ll need to do to make up for it.
Services and Amenities
In addition to the appearance of the site, it is also important to take into consideration the services and
amenities that the venue offers. Consider the following:
Does the venue have a kitchen, and can it provide catering to your event?
If so, often a venue will waive the facility fee and only charge a down payment along with the cost of
food for each attendee. Other venues may not have kitchens. Those venues without kitchen facilities
may have a partnership with a food provider that you’re required to use, or you may be free to bring in
your own vendors.
Does it have tables, chairs, and linens you can use?
If a venue has these items, you can save a great deal of money and effort by using what they have,
assuming it matches your theme and ambiance.
Does it have a setup/clean-up crew?
If you’ve found a venue which provides a setup and clean-up crew, rejoice! This isn’t always the case.
If these services aren’t available you’ll need to build your event team.
Does it have AV capabilities?
Some venues have a built-in audio-visual equipment for you to use, and others will require you to bring
that in yourself.
Capacity and Minimums
You’ll need to know the room capacity of the venues for a few reasons. First, for general and practical
reasons, 500 people can’t comfortably fit into a room with a 250-person capacity. And second, there
are fire and safety codes that the venue has to abide by. If your venue offers food and/or beverages,
find out what the food and beverage minimums, also known as F&B minimums, are and get this
information in writing. If you have past attendance records for this event, ensure that those records are
in line with the minimums. You may have plans to attract an even larger audience this year, but you
also want to make sure that your bases are covered in case attendance expectations are not met.
Parking
Does the venue have a parking lot or valet parking? A venue with a parking lot is what dreams are
made of. If that’s not the case, are there parking lots nearby which attendees can access and use? If
there is no parking available, you’re not completely out of luck as you have a few alternatives:
You can rent out or reserve nearby parking lots for your attendees and either include the cost in the
ticket prices, or have attendees pay when they park.
Layout
Even though you’ll be finding your venue early in the event planning process, you’ll still want to have
a rough idea of what types of activities you’ll be including, the amenities you’ll require, and the needs
of your team and the attendees. While narrowing down your selection, get an illustrated floor plan of
each venue, and walk through your favorites at least once, making note of important things such as
where the outlets are and where AV equipment is or can be located.
Acoustics
Acoustics is just a fancy word for how sound travels through the venue. A low ceiling will make the
venue seem cozy, but it will make it louder if it’s packed. Alternatively, a large warehouse-style venue
will result in echoes, or what architects refer to as reverberation.
2. Define an event.
An event is defined as a temporary endeavor undertaken to produce a unique product or service. An
event is also defined as a problem scheduled for solution. An event is a group of activities destined to
bring about change or create a new product or service. An event is done only one time. If it is repetitive,
it is not an event. An event should have a definite starting and ending points and budget, a clearly
defined scope or magnitude of work to be done, and specific performance requirements that must be
met. An event is more than just a game. Whatever its size or magnitude, it can be of great importance
to its community. Events are funs, they’re funs to watch, to take part in and to organize. Event must be
managed, if not, it will definitely mismanage itself. To avoid it being mismanaged, there must be an
event management team to be led by an event manager.
3. What is the importance of venue in event management?
Finding the location and venue is important for the development of the event. There may be several
attractive choices of venue, in which case the organizers need to check each venue and spot which of
them matches the requirements of the event best, is best priced, and is professionally managed.
Attention is to be paid to appearance and aesthetics, sound, smell, and cleanliness of facilities and
equipment‘s. The selection of venue where the event is to be held will also depend on the purpose,
concept, and theme of the event. It is the responsibility of the event planner to ensure that the chosen
site is suitable for the intended event and that all relevant information and approvals are obtained for
the event.
When deciding on a suitable venue the following needs to be considered:
➢ the anticipated size of the event and expected visitors.
➢ entrances and exits and car parking provisions.
➢ indoor versus outdoor requirements related to activities.
➢ requirements of people with special needs.
➢ access to infrastructure - power, water, communications, washrooms, etc.
➢ risk management and occupational health and safety.
Venue selection is absolutely vital to your event’s success and is the most critical decision for an event
planner. This decision will likely make up the largest portion of your budget and will be the vessel
used to deliver exciting and quality content to your attendees. The venue location, facilities, and
atmosphere are critical to ensuring your event’s success. Your event venue should be a draw and help
move the potential attendee dial from interested to registered. To be an effective vessel, the physical
location of a venue including accessibility for travelers, nearby attractions and restaurants, and a variety
of accommodations is essential. Understanding the demographics of your attendees is important when
identifying critical location necessities. A poor venue location with long travel times, insufferable
traffic jams, lack of suitable accommodations to meet their needs, and inadequate entertainment/dining
options can obstruct potential attendees from registering for your event. Attendee comfort is crucial.
A venue should provide adequate space and facilities for your group so having a realistic anticipated
attendance number is imperative.
There are many areas that go into making a successful event. However, the single most important thing
is your venue selection. Almost all your planning would be for nothing if the venue you select is lacking
somehow or not appropriate in an important way. In other words, your venue selection influences many
aspects of event management. The venue you select affects your budget. The majority of your budget
will go into hiring the venue you select. However, many venue owners will make your job easier by
including all the extra incentives within the location’s cost. Additionally, keep in mind that a good
venue selection can help you to reduce costs. It might even help you to save money on your marketing
budget as well.
Size matters when it comes to event management. You want to make your attendees feel as comfortable
as possible. However, guests won’t feel comfortable if you hold the event in a cramped or congested
location. Consequently, renting a spacious venue with ample parking is important if you are expecting
a large number of people. Many event managers take extra care in determining the number of people
attending their event. That’s because this is one of the major factors to consider when you’re selecting
your venue. On the other hand, if you are expecting only a small crowd, then renting a large space
would make no sense. Therefore, remember to find that balance while considering the number of
attendees.
It is always important to check the Amenities of the venue. When you want to give the best of
everything to your guests, pay extra attention to the amenities available in your venue selection. Not
every venue is designed to suit every event. Therefore, give a closer look to the unique features of each
of the venues on your short list. The amenities available at a particular venue can vary according to the
type of event it generally holds. For example, you can’t expect a rental conference room to have all the
amenities required for a large public speaking event. Therefore, consider the type of venue you select
if you want some specific amenities for your guests.
Venue selection is an important aspect of event planning. When you have nailed down this aspect, half
of your work is done. Some people choose to resolve all the other aspects of a planned event before
getting around to venue selection. This can be a serious mistake, as we have tried to convey here. So,
get the venue selection right before your next event.
4. What are the economic and socio-cultural impacts of conducting an event?
Economic Impacts
The economic impact of a major event refers to the total amount of additional expenditure generated
within a defined area, as a direct consequence of staging the event. For most events, spending by
visitors in the local area (and in particular on accommodation) is the biggest factor in generating
economic impact; however, spending by event organizers is another important consideration.
Economic Impact typically seek to establish the net change in a host economy; in other words, cash
inflows and outflows are measured to establish the net outcome. Economic impacts of events are
mostly interested in the economic benefits and opportunities that events provide with the host
communities. Economic impacts of events usually report the calculations of costs and benefits of events
on the host community, job creation opportunities that come from event hosting, financial investments
that are made on event locations and so on.
Covering the period of an event, direct economic impact is made up of additional visitor expenditure
in the local area (in particular on accommodation) from event-related visitors, such as spectators and
participants, and the net additional spending in the local area (which excludes any money invested
from within the host economy) by event organizers in preparation for the event.
Socio-Cultural
Sociocultural impacts of events and festival are mostly interested in understanding the perceptions of
host communities about the staging of events and festivals.
Nevertheless, all events share a common characteristic: people. The staging of an event attracts people
from elsewhere as participants or spectators; equally, it may only involve local people, again as
participants and/or spectators. In either case, however, the event may have impacts on both participants
and spectators and on the local (host) community more generally as well as, depending on its nature
and scale, on communities further afield or not directly involved with the event. At the same time,
people are also involved in events as organizers. They may be members of the local community, local
leaders, representatives of particular interest groups or professional event organizers. Importantly, it is
the interactions and relationships within and between these different stakeholder groups that may go
some way to determining the nature and extent of the social and cultural impacts of events.
According to Burdge and Vanclay (1996: 59), social impacts can be defined generally as ‘all social
and cultural consequences to human population of any public or private actions that alter the ways in
which people live, work, play, relate to one another, organize to meet their needs, and generally cope
as members of society’. Conversely, cultural impacts are those which ‘involve changes to the norms,
values, and beliefs of individuals that guide and rationalize their cognition of themselves and their
society’. Putting it another way, the social impacts of events in particular may be defined as
transformations in how people live their lives or, as Wall and Mathieson (2006: 227) suggest, ‘changes
in the quality of life’ of local communities, participants and other stakeholders that arise from the
holding of an event of any kind. On the other hand, the cultural impacts of events may be thought of
as transformations in the processes (values, traditions, and norms) through which individuals and
societies define themselves and their behavior (see Richards 2006) although, rather confusingly, the
study of the cultural impacts of tourism, with its explicit relevance to event studies, often embraces
impacts on expressions or manifestations of culture, such as both material and non-material forms of
culture. Thus, the distinction between ‘social’ and ‘cultural’ impacts is not always clear, the potential
commoditization of a particular cultural event, for example, arguably being definable as both a social
and cultural impact.
Social and cultural impacts may be defined respectively as the impacts of an event on the day to-day
life of people associated directly or indirectly with that event and on the values, attitudes, beliefs, and
traditions that determine or guide that day-to-day life. Moreover, there is an evident relationship
between the two and therefore, for the sake of simplicity, they will be considered here collectively as
socio-cultural impacts.
5. Define the following terminologies in event management.
A. Goals are defined as the target or purpose that a person, company, or organization imagines or plans
to accomplish or to achieve in future. They are the driving force that directs a person to make efforts
to achieve it. Goals can either be short term or long term. Goals are broad targets which can be achieved
through continuous action taken in the particular direction. Goals are based on ideas. Goals require
general actions to be attained and are abstract. A goal is a specific expected outcome from an event.
B. Objective is defined as an implementation step to attain the identified goals. Objectives are SMART,
in the sense that they are specific, measurable, achievable, and realistic and have a defined completion
date. They outline the “who, what, when, where, and how” of reaching the goals. Objectives are the
aims that you want to achieve in short span of time. Objectives are facts based. Objectives are concrete
and needs specific actions.
C. Strategies are the methods by which goals are expected to be achieved. Strategy is defined as the
method by which a goal is achieved as a result which an individual or company plans to accomplish.
Strategy serves as the pattern, system, or means by which the goal is reached or achieved.
Strategy defines your long-term goals and how you’re planning to achieve them. In other words, your
strategy gives you the path you need toward achieving your organization’s mission.
D. Tactics are tricks and patterns developed to drive and support the strategy and to get closer to the
objective. Tactics are much more concrete and are often oriented toward smaller steps and a shorter
time frame along the way. They involve best practices, specific plans, resources, etc., and they’re also
called “initiatives.”
References
Adler, P. and Kwon, S. (2002) ‘Social capital: prospects for a new concept’, Academy of Management
Review 27(1): 17–40.
Dwyer, L., Forsyth, P., & Spurr, R. (2005). Estimating the Impacts of Special Events on an
Economy. Journal of Travel Research, 43(4), 351–359. https://doi.org/10.1177/0047287505274648
Dwyer, L., Mellor, R., Mistilis, N. and Mules, T. (2000) ‘Forecasting the economic impacts of events
and conventions’, Event Management 6(3): 191–204.
Lee, C. and Taylor, T. (2005) ‘Critical reflections on the economic impact assessment of a mega-event:
the case of the 2002 FIFA World Cup’, Tourism Management 26(4): 595–603.
Shina L., Jugo, L. (2013). Evaluating economic impacts of major sports events – a meta-analysis of
the key trends. Current Issues in Tourism. 16(6). 591-611.
Waitt, G. (2003) ‘Social impacts of the Sydney Olympics’, Annals of Tourism Research 30(1): 194
215.
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