5 Questions to Ask Before Booking a Seminar Venue in Melbourne

Planning corporate events often involves juggling a few different to-do lists. Not only do you have to communicate with potential attendees to secure RSVPs, but you’ll also need to coordinate with guest speakers, technical and event staff, and potentially even keep afloat of event budgeting if you’re looking to provide ticketing services to your wider industry network.

There are also different types of corporate events, so when looking to plan for success, you’ll also need to make sure your event management strategy aligns with the intended purpose of your gathering. Are you there to celebrate with a product launch or an end of year work party? Or is your event more to inform and educate?

At Canvas House, we’ve partnered with local business owners to plan showstopping corporate events for over 20 years collectively. With extensive experience in high-end hospitality, hosting, and event management, our passionate team have designed our seminar venue to meet all the needs of event hosts, facilitators, and attendees.

Today, we’ll be using all of our industry insights to share 5 top questions you should ask when booking a seminar venue for your own seminars in Melbourne. We share this information so you can plan your next seminar events with the utmost confidence.

5 Questions to Ask Before you Book a Seminar Venue

1. What’s the venue capacity?

Capacity is naturally one of the most important factors to consider when booking a seminar venue, because you’ll need to make sure that every single one of your expected attendees can be seated comfortably and in a position where they can actually take in all the fascinating tidbits being delivered by your event speakers.

Your venue managers should be able to clearly answer what the maximum safe capacity is of any given space across their venue. From here, you can tally up the total capacity of all the spaces you’re looking to use to determine whether the seminar venue capacity aligns with your estimated attendee list.

Pro tip: If you can’t find a seminar venue with a large enough capacity that’s still within your budget, consider segmenting your attendee list into different teams or streams. That way, you can schedule seminars simultaneously across smaller cohorts in two separate spaces in your venue throughout the day rather than looking to run one big seminar in a larger space. This strategy is also what prompted us to design our training rooms and meeting rooms for hire here at Canvas House.

2. Is the venue layout adaptable?

If your seminar event is combining traditional conference or seminar formats with some more hands-on workshops or activities, then you’ll definitely want to design your seminar venue space to include a range of environments. Sadly, not all seminar venue spaces can offer this level of adaptability. If your venue manager states rooms cannot be redesigned or that larger pieces of furniture can be shifted, then you may need to look for a more flexible alternative.

This is also an essential question to ask when choosing a venue for team building activities. The last thing you want is to ask people to move in cramped and potentially even hazardous spaces. If you foresee you need open space, then account for a seminar venue that can accommodate not only a higher capacity, but also more floor area per attendee to account for high-movement activities.

3. What AV equipment do you have/can provide?

One of the best, low-stress strategies for planning an event is keeping your list of things to lug around on the ‘day of’ to an absolute minimum. So if you foresee you’ll need a seminar venue with great technical support, it’s also well worth asking them what AV equipment they have on hand for you to utilise.

Seminar venues that can provide high-quality projectors, screens, and Bluetooth-enabled speakers at a minimum, are definitely going to make set-up and pack down processes faster and easier on the day, alongside being able to accommodate third-party devices (i.e. laptops and USBs/hard drives provided by attendees or event speakers/facilitators).

4. What is your catering policy?

For daytime corporate events, it’s common to provide lunch as a way of breaking up the day. Not only will providing catering for corporate lunches help provide structure to all-day seminar events, but you may even find that the added bonus of a catered lunch will attract more attendees to your event. With the right budgeting model, you can work catering costs into your ticket prices, and make sure your seminar event breaks even.

Granted, you will need to make sure your seminar venue accommodates catering services well before you finalise your venue booking. Ask your venue staff if they have kitchen amenities on-site, or if your catering team may need to bring their own kitchen equipment.

If there is no safe area to set up kitchen equipment like hotplates, omelette stations, etc., then you may consider using food trucks to cater your event. Naturally, this catering option is also only feasible if your seminar venue has enough parking on-site to accommodate both event attendees as well as your catering staff and their vehicles.

Pro tip: Ask your venue managers if they have any partnerships with local suppliers like caterers and event designers. You may be able to get some competitive rates on catering services through your event planning team and their wider network. Every little perk can help elevate your event!

5. How accessible is the venue?

Finally, as corporate seminars either run for full- or half-days during the week, you can expect some of your event attendees to be commuting from their office or workplace rather than directly from home. If you are expecting attendees to commute from the CBD, for instance, then you’ll want to make sure your seminar venue is easy enough to locate and access from public transport, ensuring minimal travel times and lower transportation costs.

In a similar vein, booking a seminar venue that comes equipped with a designated spacious loading zone can make it a lot easier to coordinate movements with your event staff (i.e. catering teams, delivery drivers, interior designers). If you’re planning on bringing in your own furnishings and large decor for your seminar event (i.e. stalls, banners, stage dressings, etc.), then ask your venue manager if there is sufficient loading access for all these logistical considerations.

Book Canvas House for your Next Corporate Seminar in Melbourne

Boasting a highly presentable open plan event space that delivers a bright, airy atmosphere plus accompanying private meeting rooms, training spaces, outdoor spaces, and even a full commercial catering kitchen and FOH bar, Canvas House is the ultimate seminar venue for all Melbourne corporate events. Our team of in-house event planners also have extensive experience planning a variety of corporate events, from industry awards nights to seminars, panel discussions, and other networking events.

Want to book Canvas House for your next business seminar? Then get in touch with our passionate events team now. We’d love to speak with you further about how you can elevate your next seminar, corporate parties, and other professional events.