Website for event venues, with viewings booked against the room's diary
Nobody has ever booked a room from a photograph. They book it after they have walked into it, seen where the light falls at four o'clock and worked out where seventy people would put their coats, which makes the viewing the only thing on your site that really has to work.
The site runs on your own domain, with SSL, hosting and nightly backups in every plan. From £49 to £199 a month, excluding VAT.
Three things that happen between the enquiry and the deposit
The events themselves run beautifully. It is the fortnight before anybody has committed to anything that eats the week.
The viewing nobody can book
Someone wants to see the room. The room has a christening in it on Saturday, a training day on Tuesday and a dressing crew in it on Friday afternoon, so the only person who can say when it is walkable is whoever has the diary open.
That person is currently carrying chairs. By the time they ring back, the enquirer has already walked round the hall on the other side of town, because that one offered them a Thursday at two.
Saturdays gone, Tuesdays empty
The weekends for next year were taken by the end of last spring, mostly by weddings booked eighteen months out, and there is a waiting list you keep on paper for the two dates that might come free.
And then there is Tuesday. And Wednesday. Rooms sitting cold and heated all the same, on days when the people who would hire them for a training session or an away day have no idea the place does that.
Seventy guests, seventy different extras
One wants the room laid out in cabaret with a projector and coffee twice. One wants it clear, with a bar until midnight and a licence checked. One wants tables for eight, a lectern, a hearing loop and lunch for a dietary list of four kinds.
Same room, three completely different prices, and all three have to be worked out from scratch in an email that takes forty minutes to write and gets no reply.
Four things that turn an enquiry into a date in the diary
The order matters: get them into the room, then get the extras onto a page they can say yes to.
Viewings booked against the room's real calendar
The room itself is a resource with its own diary, and viewing slots are offered only where the room is genuinely walkable: not during the christening, not while the dressing crew are in on Friday.
Someone browsing at half past ten at night picks Thursday at two and it is done. That is the single moment where venues lose enquiries, and it is the one thing on the page that has to happen without anybody carrying chairs being interrupted.
Weekday hire, priced where people can see it
Full day, half day, evening only, each with its own fixed price and its own capacity written next to it. The Tuesday rate does not have to be the Saturday rate, and it should not be.
A training manager looking for somewhere for twenty people in March is not going to send an enquiry to find out whether they can afford you. Put the day rate on the page and they either book a viewing or they do not, and either way it took neither of you an afternoon.
The extras as lines they approve
Room hire, the layout change, chairs and linen, the projector and screen, coffee on arrival and again at eleven, lunch per head, the bar extension, the extra hour at the end. Each a line with its own cost, added or taken off as they change their mind.
They approve it on its own page, dated, and the deposit that holds the date goes through your own Stripe account rather than waiting on an invoice and a bank transfer.
The company that came last November
Every enquiry and every booking sits in the register with the date, the room, the numbers and what they had. The firm that ran its away day here last autumn will run one again, and they are on a list you can go through in an afternoon in September.
Weekday hire is repeat business almost entirely. It comes back to venues that remembered to ask.
What the hire list can look like
You set your own rates and your own capacities. The shape shown here is the useful part: fixed prices where the room is simply hired, quoted where an event has to be built.
Rooms can be their own categories, so a visitor with twenty people never has to read the pricing for the room that holds two hundred.
What venues ask before they change anything
Each room is set up as its own resource with its own diary, capacity and rates. A viewing or an event booked in one has no effect on the others, and nothing can be offered while that particular room is occupied.
Yes, and the far-off dates are the reason to keep the diary in one place rather than in a book behind reception. What is held for next autumn shows as held the moment somebody looks.
Put the hire itself at a fixed price, since a Tuesday in the small room really is the same price every Tuesday, and quote everything built on top of it. Most venues end up with a short fixed list and one quoted package.
The quote carries the extras as lines, they approve it on its own page and the deposit goes through your own Stripe account. The date is held against their name from the approval rather than from a promise on the phone.
The site can be imported so the photographs and the room descriptions survive. The diary is the part that changes: rooms become resources, and the spreadsheet stops being the only copy anybody can read.
£49 to £199 a month plus VAT across the plans. Your own domain, SSL, hosting, nightly backups and support in English are in all of them, and SMS reminders can be added as a prepaid extra.
More trades
- Holiday letsDirect bookings with nobody taking a cut.
- BuildersQuotes with cost lines, approved online.
- PlumbersThe emergency line, unburdened by prices and an FAQ.
- ElectriciansFixed prices for small jobs, quotes for the rest.
- Painters and decoratorsQuoted per room and surface, sold on photos.
- Flooring fittersPriced per floor type and square metre.
- All trades
Open the diary to the people who want to see the room
Describe the rooms, what they hold and the sort of events you take, or point at the site you have now. The builder returns a first version with each room as its own resource, weekday and weekend rates, and a viewing that can be booked without anybody being interrupted.
The site runs on your own domain, with SSL, hosting and nightly backups in every plan. From £49 to £199 a month, excluding VAT.