Your Venue Is in a Tourism Town. So Why Is It Quiet Monday to Thursday? | Sarah Colgate
When I was on the board at Destination Gold Coast, I watched a lot of venues around me live and die by the weekend.
Full on Saturday. Empty on a Tuesday. And every one of those owners told me the same thing. The market is seasonal, Sarah. There is nothing we can do.
There is plenty you can do. You are sitting in a tourism destination and tourism destinations are exactly where business events want to be.
Conferences, incentive trips, board retreats, gala dinners. These are the bookings that fill your quiet days and pay well while they do it. Most event venues in tourism towns are leaving that money on the table because they only know how to sell to one type of customer.
I want to change that.
Let me walk you through how business events actually get sold, so you can go after them.
Leisure and business events are two different games
The couple booking your rooftop for a birthday found you on Instagram or through a mate. That is leisure. It is lovely and you should keep it. But business events do not work like that.
A company running a three day conference does not scroll your feed and book. Often they do not even choose the venue themselves. They hand the whole thing to an agency, and that agency picks where it lands. If you are not talking to those agencies, you are invisible to a huge slice of the market. It does not matter how good your venue is.
I have to say this was the bit that took me the longest to understand. I kept marketing harder to the wrong people and wondering why the corporate work never came.
So who actually books business events?
There are four ways this business comes to you. You need all four working, not one.
Professional Conference Organisers and Destination Management Companies. These are the agencies companies hire to run their events end to end. They source the venue, book the suppliers, run the day. Get on their radar and one relationship can bring you years of recurring bookings. They will expect a commission or a wholesale rate, and that is fair. It is the cost of the reach.
Direct to corporate. Pitching straight to the decision-maker inside a company, the marketing manager or the HR director. Higher margins because there is no agency in the middle. But it is a longer game and you have to build the pipeline yourself.
Tourism bureaus and your convention bureau. Your region is bidding for big conferences whether you are involved or not. Register as a supplier. Get known by the people writing those bids. This is where the large-scale work comes from.
Associations and trade shows. Industry bodies run the same conference every year, often for years. Win one and you can win it for a decade. Find the annual events in your niche and get in front of the organising committee.
Learn how they price, and give them what they need
Here is where a lot of venues trip up. They treat a corporate enquiry like a wedding enquiry. It is not the same conversation.
Agencies price their own services a few ways. A percentage of the total spend, usually 15 to 25%. A flat project fee for a defined scope. A per-person rate for group programs. Or a hybrid of those. You do not need to run their numbers. You just need to understand that they are running a business too, and your rate sheet needs to make sense inside their model.
When an enquiry comes in, they cannot quote until they know the details. The dates and the headcount. The budget, or the budget per person. What the client is actually trying to do, whether it is a product launch or a reward trip for top performers. Room requirements, food and beverage, any galas or special dietary needs, transfers and off-site activities.
I suggest you build a simple corporate enquiry form that asks for exactly this. When you make it easy for an agency to quote, you become the venue they come back to. Trust me, they remember the ones who make their job harder.
What I would do first
You do not need to boil the ocean. Pick a few things and start.
Write down the PCOs and DMCs working in your region and find one warm way to introduce yourself.
Register with your convention bureau as a supplier this week. It is usually free and most venues never bother.
Build a corporate enquiry form that captures dates, headcount, budget and objectives.
Look at your quiet days over the last year and set a target for how many you want to fill with business events.
None of this is quick and none of it is glamorous. But it fills the days that leisure never will, and it pays better while it does it.
For me, the venues that grow in a tourism town are the ones that stop waiting for the weekend crowd and go and build the other side of the business. You are in the right location. Now go and sell to the people who need it.
Ready to build the business events side of your venue?
Call me on 0491 729 043 for personalised advice and support. I have sat where you are sitting, and I can help you go after the bookings that fill your quiet days.
