5 Ways For Getting Your UK Venue Ready For Christmas Events
It’s time to get your teams together to promote your UK venue to corporate event planners and plan for Christmas events! While autumn is off to a rather confused start with the mix of a nationwide heatwave and some milder weather, the Festive Season is just around the corner.
How Christmas-ready is your venue? Corporate bookers are all back from the summer holidays and want to get ahead of the rush and secure team diaries and get venues booked. Don’t worry! We’ve compiled a list of five tips to ensure you’re ahead of the game and can turn enquiries into confirmed bookings this Silly Season!
1. The Main Event – Food
What’s your festive food offering this year? What trends or themes are you tapping into? Get creative and think through how classics and new twists can flow through your entire menu offering – from vol-au-vent canapés to mince pies for desserts. It’s also important to think about dietary requirements including gluten-free and ensuring a good spread of vegetarian and vegan options. Having uniqueness and really leaning into a festive food line-up will help position your venue as a memorable offering.
2. Getting On Top of Pre-order
Pre-orders are massive during the Festive Season streamlining the preparation and balancing food ordering and ensuring everyone is catered for and no one misses out. Pre-orders help you balance revenue too, ensuring you know the spend ahead of time. Deciding on your pre-order options are critical for your success, it’ll position you favourably to corporate bookers – also, having a range of price point options available is key too. Why not have tiered options available for corporate bookers to choose from, and up-sell with additional options including drinks?
3. Flexible (Well Dressed) Spaces
Now it’s time to dress the space – dressing your space in its Christmas best is key to stand out and create a unique experience. Of course not every venue is able to create as Annabelle’s style standout, but think about what you can do and what’s manageable. Look at your private and event spaces and where you can carry the theme through. Whether it be a decorated tree, painted pinecones or a snowman display, these touches will help signal your venue is ready to celebrate! Also, think about the overall space you have and ensuring that the spaces are flexible enough to cater to small and large groups. Do you need to upgrade your AV systems, do the curtains need changing? Ensure the space is ready to party!
4. Don’t Forget the Drinks!
Creating a bespoke seasonal drink menu will create a memorable experience and ensure your venue stands out. From hot to chilled drinks, the Christmas theme works so well. Consider consulting with a mixologist to create a stand-out drinks menu and include non-alcoholic options. The drinks menu can be incorporated into your pre-order options too and provide a great opportunity to upsell drinks packages. Consider a base and a premium tier of drinks packages to show diversity of offerings and upsell opportunities. Beautiful cocktails are incredibly social media friendly.hy not think of a signature over-the-top drink and engage with local influencers to get some attention behind it?
5. Picture Perfect
All of your efforts in your food, cocktails, and, themed spacess can easily be lost if people don’t see it and know about it! How are you marketing your UK venue? Get behind the lens and capture stills and ideally videos of the space. If you have the budget to spend on paid social or digital advertising, now is the time! Market your offering and target corporate bookers in your area. Jump on LinkedIn and explore the features that allow you to target business, employees and groups in your area. Don’t forget the power of a drop in! Print up flyers, and get around to your local corporate offices. Better yet, entice them with a “taster” launch of your Festive Season offering and if they book after doing so offer them an incentive! Seeing and experiencing (not to mention tasting) is incredibly powerful and creates a lasting impression!
Ready to Streamline the Event Management Process for this Festive Season?
Capture Festive Season demand and turn leads into confirmed bookings and increase your revenue with Tripleseat, the ultimate event management software. Tripleseat helps you manage and streamline any type and size of event with our cloud-based software. From handling pre-orders through to professional proposals and taking payment via Stripe – all on one platform your whole team can access. Christmas events are made easy with Tripleseat, where anyone, anytime can access the event and see the size, type and pre-orders for any party.
Join leading UK venues like Corrigan Collection, who have been using Tripleseat since 2019 to make their event business easy across their five locations in London and Dublin. Kathyrn Williams, Head of Sales, said “Since using Tripleseat, we have seen our bookings increase massively.” Book a demo to learn more about how Tripleseat will streamline your events to bring in more business this Christmas.
