Sounds like the beginning of a really geeky insider joke doesn’t it? Well don’t worry, I’m not going start throwing tired old punch lines about dodgy tickets or double bookings at you. I am however going to discuss the eminently serious topic of how event bookings are or ‘should’ be made within venues with multiple interested parties.

I hope you would agree that traditionally the method of booking a production has been as follows:

• Programmer decides to schedule a new show (either internally or externally produced)
• Programmer agrees a date with producer / promoter and puts it in ‘a’ / ‘the’ diary
• Box Office Manager is told about the show and asked to set it up in the BO system, ready for on sale
• Venue Manager is informed of the schedule for the next week / month / quarter, which includes the new show, and is asked to resource the booking accordingly (rota staff, order in equipment, organise catering, etc.)

Whilst this method of information flow has generally been successful in the past, it is starting to produce a number of negative side effects, which are becoming more pronounced in today’s revenue driven world.

With a greater emphasis across UK arts organisations to rely less on public and trust funding and become more self-sufficient, there is often pressure on the Venue Manager to increase revenue through hiring out the available spaces within the building. These usually include smaller spaces such as rehearsal rooms, studio spaces or even dressing rooms, as well as bars, foyers and outdoor spaces – anywhere that can conceivably be hired out! However finding a suitable time and space for a prospective customer can often be tricky, especially if the customer requires a specific date that has already been booked up in advance.

Furthermore, if the organisation decides to put more of a focus on Fundraising or Development, then the demand for these spaces for fundraising events, member bookings or even backstage tours becomes even greater.

Can you see where I am going with this?

The time when all the spaces within a theatre or multi use arts centre were always available and up for grabs on a first come first serve basis is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Organisations have to make tough decisions about their available spaces, often based on what will bring the maximum expected income.

Whether it is a lucrative conference booker who is only interested in weekends or a high value donor who is willing to give you ludicrous amounts of money if they can host an event in the main auditorium on a Wednesday lunch time for example, there are now many more opportunities to secure revenue from a venue, rather than simply selling tickets to a show.

Whilst it is still true that artistic programming usually (and, in my opinion, should) take first priority, often venues are having to ask themselves tough questions, such as “Can we really afford to schedule a half full matinee performance over a potentially lucrative venue hire?”

So what’s the answer?

In my experience, from both managing venues and helping others to make better use of their space as a valuable asset, informed decisions must come from good data, effective communication between all teams and individuals and a robust and integrated software solution.

Good data enables individuals and teams to effectively measure the income that each space is providing and use that to estimate which choice of future booking might bring in the most revenue. Recording information such as additional charged-for resources (staff, catering etc.) against events, sales of food and drink at the café or bar as a result of a particular type of booking or the number of repeat bookings that were generated from a successful event can all be analysed before being fed into the decision making process.

Effective communication, whilst always being critical for any profitable organisation, is even more crucial when space management is involved. Logging strong interest in particular time slots in the diary or sending a quick internal message informing others of a cancellation can help keep everyone informed and open up more opportunities to make the most of your spaces at all times.

Education of all team members also comes into this equation, to ensure that programmers and event bookers alike don’t try and schedule multiple complex events back to back in the same space, for example. Recording Get-in and Get-out (Ed: aka “Load-in and Load-out”) periods in the diary or setting up disruption warnings can often be used effectively to reduce this type of situation.

Finally a robust and simple to use software solution, which is integrated between all departments (Box Office, Marketing, Venue Hires etc.) and can be used by all team members wherever they are working, will always make life easier, as the fewer places everyone has to look for information, the less mistakes will happen!

We’ve worked hard to meet this need through integrating a fully functional Venue Manager with our Box Box Office, CRM, and Marketing packages, to name but a few.

To find out more about how PatronBase’s integrated Box Office, CRM and Venue Manager software solution can help make these decisions easier for you, contact us today.